The coming WebKitGTK+ 2.4 apocalypse

Posted Aug 9, 2017 20:53 UTC (Wed) by mcatanzaro (subscriber, #93033)
In reply to: The coming WebKitGTK+ 2.4 apocalypse by chrisV
Parent article: The coming WebKitGTK+ 2.4 apocalypse

We dropped Empathy from GNOME a long time ago for various reasons. There is zero chance that we would add Pidgin.

But the Empathy WebKit2 port is already complete. The master branch is not currently releasable due to some half-baked UI changes that I merged, but we could do a release right away if we back out the UI changes. Just requires an hour or two of effort.

The coming WebKitGTK+ 2.4 apocalypse

Posted Aug 9, 2017 23:43 UTC (Wed) by chrisV (guest, #43417) [Link] (3 responses)

> We dropped Empathy from GNOME a long time ago for various reasons.

It is in http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/apps/3.24/3.24.2/sources, and also in http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/apps/3.25/3.25.4/sources. I guess that is an artifact of the way the gnome ftp site is automated. Quid est gnomus.

The coming WebKitGTK+ 2.4 apocalypse

Posted Aug 10, 2017 2:35 UTC (Thu) by mcatanzaro (subscriber, #93033) [Link] (2 responses)

OK we're not going to actually delete all the previous releases, or stop anyone from releasing new versions. Eventually someone (maybe me... *shudder*) will release another new version on ftp.gnome.org.

We just don't consider Empathy to be a core app anymore. It's great for chatting with software developers, but not great for chatting with your friends, because your friends have never heard of any of the protocols it supports. So it's not useful to have installed by default, and it's no longer released as part of GNOME. You won't find it if you peruse the boring NEWS files in the GNOME release announcements.

The coming WebKitGTK+ 2.4 apocalypse

Posted Aug 10, 2017 15:44 UTC (Thu) by chrisV (guest, #43417) [Link] (1 responses)

I see. However it is not an issue of deleting previous releases: no one would do that. The point is that it is put in the gnome ftp source directory for particular gnome releases, including for gnome-3.24.2 (the current stable version) and gnome-3.25.4 (the development release for gnome-3.26). On your analysis, it shouldn't be there. Have a look at the links I gave and you will see what I meant.

The coming WebKitGTK+ 2.4 apocalypse

Posted Aug 10, 2017 17:20 UTC (Thu) by mcatanzaro (subscriber, #93033) [Link]

You found a bug!

I think I've fixed it going forward. It should not be there for 3.25.90.