[gpodder] Re: Development news: "cuatro" branch and "master" branch
- From: Joseph Wickremasinghe <jnwickremasinghe@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: gpodder@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 14:15:12 -0700 (PDT)
Hi Thomas,
Have you been able to spend any time in the cuatro branch? I ask because I have
some C++ experience that I would enjoy using to forward the gpodder cause :)
Additionally, I was wondering if you wanted to make a special mention of the
iPod sync addition into the master branch so that Apple owners can try it out?
:)
I'll work on the bugs assigned to me over the next few weeks.
Joseph
--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 4/23/13, Thomas Perl <th.perl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Subject: [gpodder] Development news: "cuatro" branch and "master" branch
To: gpodder@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2013, 1:31 PM
Hi,
As hinted a few times already, "cuatro" is the new branch in
Git where
development for the next major gPodder release happens. The
"master"
branch will from today on become more of a "stable" branch -
I expect
bugfixes, translation updates and maybe some more clean-ups
to the
device sync to land there. If somebody works on iPod
support, etc..,
we can also land this in the "master" branch. It's not going
away
anytime soon, but don't expect much new/fresh development
happening
there in the mid- to long-term.
Ideas for the next major gPodder release have been posted
at
http://wiki.gpodder.org/wiki/Cuatro in February. While
these are just
some ideas, and I'm not sure we'll jump to C++ in the end
(Python 3
seems like a more sensible goal at the moment), the general
direction
is clear: Continue to move things out of the core, make the
core
well-tested, modular, fast and portable. Allow extending
gPodder using
extension scripts (Bernd has done some great work there, and
we
continue to gain features by means of extension modules,
which do not
have to be enabled all the time). I'd also like to see
things like
gpodder.net sync, Flattr and MP3 Player/Device sync
implemented as
extensions, outside of the core.
As far as user interfaces go, I think we should make the
core flexible
enough to provide a solid foundation for quickly
bootstrapping new,
experimental UIs (see also Attila's excellent article about
"throwaway
UI code" at
http://achipa.blogspot.com/2011/07/qt-components-story-of-ugly-qwidgetling.html).
We won't ever be able to create a nice "native" UI on *any*
platform
using just a single technology (such as Gtk or QML or any
other
toolkit/language), so the idea is to have simple, quick,
native UIs
for platforms that we support and rely on the community to
provide
native UIs for other platforms that we don't support
directly.
What I mean with that is that instead of settling with the
PyGTK UI
for Linux, OS X and Windows, there should be a "GNOME 3" UI
that
integrates well with GNOME 3, maybe a "Ubuntu Desktop" UI
that
integrates well with Unity (written in Ubuntu's QML
components?),
definitely a CLI as we have now, maybe a Windows Forms UI or
a Metro
(Modern UI)-style app for Windows, and a Cocoa UI for OS X.
On the mobile side, there should definitely be a QML UI for
Harmattan,
Sailfish or Ubuntu Phone (whatever is going to be the QML
platform of
the day when "cuatro" is ready). For Android, we ideally
want to have
a native Android Java UI that follows the Android UI
guidelines
(http://developer.android.com/design/).
For Blackberry 10 we would
have a Cascades UI and for Windows Phone some Metro-style
UI. Not that
I'd have time to write any of them, but if we wanted to have
gPodder
on such a platform, writing a native UI for it should be the
way to go
instead of making other UIs cater to every platform's
peculiarities.
That's not to say that someone cannot re-use a Linux Desktop
UI for
Mac OS X should no Cocoa UI be available - but we shouldn't
make the
Linux UI codebase and/or interface more complicated because
of that.
What will stay the same:
- Open Source (maybe new code will be available under a
more liberal license)
- Support for non-podcast subscriptions (alternative video
and audio services)
- Extendability with Python
In short:
- I'll be mostly hacking on "cuatro" from now on
- Keep sending patches for gPodder 3 in the mean time
- If you can, help test the "cuatro" branch every now and
then
Enjoy!
Thomas
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