Proposal about current status of GNOME

[Bruce Dubbs]

Randy McMurchy wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> There is an entity in the book named &gnome-version;. It is the major
> part of a GNOME release. In the case of the current book it is 2.18.
> We use this entity quite a bit in the URLs of GNOME packages. Wayne
> is busy updating all the preliminary packages for GNOME. Most GNOME
> support packages (libsoup for example) now use the current version
> of gnome in the URL.
> 
> However, Wayne can't use the gnome-version entity because it would
> break the libsoup URL.

Create a gnome-target entity and use that until all the packages use it and then 
do a sed s/target/version/ when appropriate.

> It is my opinion that GNOME is totally broken in current SVN. Enough
> that I feel it should actually be commented out completely, until
> GNOME is actually updated.
> 
> There are so many missing packages, and so many obsolete packages,
> that I don't believe anyone could use the book to build GNOME unless
> you are *very* experienced, in which case you don't need BLFS.
> 
> I propose we comment out GNOME from the book until it is ready. That
> way I can bump the gnome-version entity to 2.26 and we can use the
> entity in gnome support package URLs.
> 
> Anyone have a problem with this?

I'm not sure what you want to comment out.  There are many packages that require 
or at least can use Gnome libraries.  The desktop may not work, but many of the 
libraries should be OK.

I'd be more inclined to put in a big note detailing the status and update as we 
go.  We could even go the entity route wit a note for each package needing 
update.  Just a thought.

   -- Bruce