Do we really need a compiz-extra "project" ?

[stalynx]

My feeling that an actual separate project with its own forums and developers is only going to add more overhead/bureaucracy/politics to something that should be dead simple.

The community-extra package should be just that, a package perhaps maintained by one or two people. Also what goes into the package should somehow be mandated by the community at large.

What the compiz-beryl community really needs a is a *-look type site where you can have multiple threads of development going on. The extra packages should be just an attempt to tie all these threads together. Also there is nothing stopping other people from creating their own packages to create their own user experience.

This to me seems like the best solution and most "community" oriented.

[wfarr]

Exactly. :)

[delfick]

the way i see it it should be

core = compiz

everything provididing functionality, i.e. plugins, settings managers, etc, come under the collective name compiz-extra

(and everything community related come under name beryl)

treating compiz-extra as another project (this is directed at devs) would be stupid...it's not another project, rather a grouping of everything that makes compiz cool :D

[imnotpc]

My feeling that an actual separate project with its own forums and developers is only going to add more overhead/bureaucracy/politics to something that should be dead simple.

Try to think of Compiz-Core the same way you think of X Server or xgl. It's a program that enables graphic effects on your desktop. It is a compositing window manager that will be layered on top of X Server, nothing more. If the distros do a good job of integrating it, the end users should not even know it exists.

Compiz-Extra is the part the users will see and configure. It will have decorators and other DE specific code, settings managers, optional plugins, and other programs. These are two very different types of packages in both content and goals, and using the same name would be confusing in the long run.

[wfarr]

My feeling that an actual separate project with its own forums and developers is only going to add more overhead/bureaucracy/politics to something that should be dead simple.

Try to think of Compiz-Core the same way you think of X Server or xgl. It's a program that enables graphic effects on your desktop. It is a compositing window manager that will be layered on top of X Server, nothing more. If the distros do a good job of integrating it, the end users should not even know it exists.

Compiz-Extra is the part the users will see and configure. It will have decorators and other DE specific code, settings managers, optional plugins, and other programs. These are two very different types of packages in both content and goals, and using the same name would be confusing in the long run.

The new forum should still have both Core, Plugin, and Application development areas. Hacking will still be done on the core post-merge.

[imnotpc]

The new forum should still have both Core, Plugin, and Application development areas. Hacking will still be done on the core post-merge.
Yes, the forum will still support Compiz-Core although I don't know how useful that will be. We had a core section in the current forum and it never had a single post on it so we removed it. The core devs prefer the compiz ML for discussion. The wiki will be more important for Compiz-Core as it will tell the users and other interested parties what compiz is, what it does, and where they can get support.

[Sorcerer]

I think there should be only one forum for users. People couldn't care less if there were a hundred mailing lists but the community shouldn't be split IMHO. It would make finding answers for problems much more difficult.

[wfarr]

I think there should be only one forum for users. People couldn't care less if there were a hundred mailing lists but the community shouldn't be split IMHO. It would make finding answers for problems much more difficult.

I'll +1 to this.

[stalynx]

Try to think of Compiz-Core the same way you think of X Server or xgl. It's a program that enables graphic effects on your desktop. It is a compositing window manager that will be layered on top of X Server, nothing more. If the distros do a good job of integrating it, the end users should not even know it exists.

Compiz-Extra is the part the users will see and configure. It will have decorators and other DE specific code, settings managers, optional plugins, and other programs. These are two very different types of packages in both content and goals, and using the same name would be confusing in the long run.

I don't see why this all can't be separate so users can pick and choose what they want to use. Also I don't see how this should be priority over a proper community site. I think it is flawed reasoning to believe compiz-core is some sort of framework that parallels the xserver. Compiz is a compositing/window manager and not the only one around. Compiz is an application not a framework.

Compiz is however very plugin oriented and maybe this perhaps can lead one to think compiz-core is a framework for "compiz" related applications. But that's abusing the word 'framework'.

[jackkerouac]

I think there should be only one forum for users. People couldn't care less if there were a hundred mailing lists but the community shouldn't be split IMHO. It would make finding answers for problems much more difficult.

I'll +1 to this.

+2.

As long as the plugins are in an easy to find place and easily installable (not only from svn, git, abc, whatever) then I'm for it. I think it should be easy for the end user to say 'okay, I've downloaded and installed Compiz, now where can i get those cool plugins?" without having to then say "What the frig is git? I have to compile what? Git outta here!"

[imnotpc]

I think there should be only one forum for users. People couldn't care less if there were a hundred mailing lists but the community shouldn't be split IMHO. It would make finding answers for problems much more difficult.
Yes, I think there needs to be only one forum for users. In fact I think there should be one forum, period. One of the strengths of our forum is the way the plugin devs interact with and help the users.

[RYX]

I highly support the idea of having only one forum.

Concerning the problem of the scattered and hard to find plugins - here is a quote from a proposal I made on the admin list. This is a planned feature that will come soon:
There will be a special plugins-section (indicated by a separate
"tab") where developers can present their compiz-plugins to end-users.
A plugin-page will contain things like e.g. information, documentation,
screenshots or videos and will be realized through a special template.
The plugins-section will greatly improve the overall usability of the
site for end-users and allow to easily find a plugin and its
documentation.

:)

[jackkerouac]

There will be a special plugins-section (indicated by a separate
"tab") where developers can present their compiz-plugins to end-users.
A plugin-page will contain things like e.g. information, documentation,
screenshots or videos and will be realized through a special template.
The plugins-section will greatly improve the overall usability of the
site for end-users and allow to easily find a plugin and its
documentation.

Much better. It beats having to scrounge through threads to find the latest version of the plugin you want.

[delfick]

I highly support the idea of having only one forum.

Concerning the problem of the scattered and hard to find plugins - here is a quote from a proposal I made on the admin list. This is a planned feature that will come soon:
There will be a special plugins-section (indicated by a separate
"tab") where developers can present their compiz-plugins to end-users.
A plugin-page will contain things like e.g. information, documentation,
screenshots or videos and will be realized through a special template.
The plugins-section will greatly improve the overall usability of the
site for end-users and allow to easily find a plugin and its
documentation.

:)

i think i actually suggested a forum section for that once in the old old beryl forums.....

(i know i thought of it, but not too sure of whether i actually suggested it though, can't remember now)

i'm all for it :D


so then how easy would it be to merge the two forums and put it under whichever domain is faster and crashes less??

[imnotpc]

The forums are really the heart of the community so this is a top priority in my opinion.

[mikedee]

so then how easy would it be to merge the two forums and put it under whichever domain is faster and crashes less??

I think merging forums (ie keeping all posts from both in one new forum) will be virtually impossible. There would be so many problems importing that sort of data and the demand is probably very small so I doubt such a tool exists.

Sorry, but thats the cold hard reality of the situation. Unless someone can point an easy and reliable way to do it, it will have to be done by hand.

Volunteers ?

[jackkerouac]

so then how easy would it be to merge the two forums and put it under whichever domain is faster and crashes less??

I think merging forums (ie keeping all posts from both in one new forum) will be virtually impossible. There would be so many problems importing that sort of data and the demand is probably very small so I doubt such a tool exists.

Sorry, but thats the cold hard reality of the situation. Unless someone can point an easy and reliable way to do it, it will have to be done by hand.

Volunteers ?

Perhaps just porting the howtos and most important information from one to the other?

[delfick]

so then how easy would it be to merge the two forums and put it under whichever domain is faster and crashes less??

I think merging forums (ie keeping all posts from both in one new forum) will be virtually impossible. There would be so many problems importing that sort of data and the demand is probably very small so I doubt such a tool exists.

Sorry, but thats the cold hard reality of the situation. Unless someone can point an easy and reliable way to do it, it will have to be done by hand.

Volunteers ?

damn, that's what i thought would be the case....

oh well....

i say we create a third forum (just name it compiz community forums) and then leave the other two forums open for a month or two whilst the userbase transfer their favourite ideas to new posts in the new forum
(i.e. save the important stuff, like my scalewhishlist :D)

though if they can be merged, then even better :D

either way, a single forum would be better than two.....

[RYX]

Here are two other quotes from my proposal that focus on merging the forums. Please don't forget this is only a proposal, no concrete plan:
-The forums will be created in a way that user-experience from beryl-
and compiz-forums at least remains (or is improved where possible). All
topics and posts from the beryl-forums will be moved to the
compiz-forums. All posts that don't contain valuable information for the
newly joined community will eventually be moved to garbage - once they
have no more views.

- The beryl-wiki will be moved to the compiz-wiki and all information
that is convertable will be kept with as few changes as possible. It
will be ensured that the loss of people's work is kept as minimal as
possible.

Please note that at the time of writing I thought that beryl re-joins with compiz - that's why I describe how the beryl-forums should be moved to compiz, not the other way round. This is no attempt at being offensive, egoistic or selfish :) ...

EDIT: To be true, I think it is nearly impossible (or hell of a work) to merge a phpBB3 forum back into a phpBB2 forum. Especially because all agreed that we will not install phpBB3 before it is out of beta-state.

[mikedee]

i say we create a third forum (just name it compiz community forums) and then leave the other two forums open for a month or two whilst the userbase transfer their favourite ideas to new posts in the new forum
(i.e. save the important stuff, like my scalewhishlist :D)

Look at our post counts on this forum. We have put a lot of time and effort into these forums and we are not prepared to lose them AGAIN. Remember we also put a lot into the compiz.org forum and that was all lost. We want to move forwards not constantly redo everything every 3 months.

Its not a case of we do not want to work with beryl people on a common core, we just do not think throwing away valuable information is a good idea.

The way I see it is, we lose both or we lose just one. I think this one has a much higher quality (ie posts in the correct places) so obviously I think this should stay. Losing both again is not an option.

I say grab your screenshots and run :) (I am not being mean, I am just a realist)

[maniac]

i say we create a third forum (just name it compiz community forums) and then leave the other two forums open for a month or two whilst the userbase transfer their favourite ideas to new posts in the new forum
(i.e. save the important stuff, like my scalewhishlist :D)

Look at our post counts on this forum. We have put a lot of time and effort into these forums and we are not prepared to lose them AGAIN. Remember we also put a lot into the compiz.org forum and that was all lost. We want to move forwards not constantly redo everything every 3 months.

Well, the same applies to the Beryl forums with its 30000 posts ;)


The way I see it is, we lose both or we lose just one. I think this one has a much higher quality (ie posts in the correct places) so obviously I think this should stay. Losing both again is not an option.

While there's certainly quite a bit of noise on the Beryl forums, I think the information amount in both forums is quite equal (especially given the fact that the Beryl forums are 5x larger).

I'd say the following: We agree that the most important stuff of both forums should be merged together; and we should leave the decision which forum is migrated into the other (or if it's better to start fresh and take important stuff into a new one) up to the admins and people which actually do the conversion / migration :)

[iznogood]

Please note that at the time of writing I thought that beryl re-joins with compiz - that's why I describe how the beryl-forums should be moved to compiz, not the other way round.


Can you(someone) post an official announcememt on the current status of the merging ????

[mikedee]

Please note that at the time of writing I thought that beryl re-joins with compiz - that's why I describe how the beryl-forums should be moved to compiz, not the other way round.


Can you(someone) post an official announcememt on the current status of the merging ????

We know as much as you do. As far as the code side goes, most of the plugins have been ported and they are in my tarball in the packages section. There are some extra ones which were split from blurfx (mblur and reflex). Emerald is done too.

They seem to be working mainly on porting libbs and a few other support scripts etc. There is not much going on the mailing list other than options changes. So I assume most does not need core changes, or they are working around them.

As far as merging communitite goes, I am totally confused

[jackkerouac]

As far as the code side goes, most of the plugins have been ported and they are in my tarball in the packages section. There are some extra ones which were split from blurfx (mblur and reflex). Emerald is done too.

So is there one oplace someone can go to get the latest Compiz and all the plugins, including Emerald? Are there instructions? I'm not a big fan of compiling, but I'd like to take a gander. I know there were problems with the Emerald plugin (needing libdecoration or some such thing), has that been addressed?

[iznogood]

We know as much as you do. As far as the code side goes, most of the plugins have been ported and they are in my tarball in the packages section. There are some extra ones which were split from blurfx (mblur and reflex). Emerald is done too.

They seem to be working mainly on porting libbs and a few other support scripts etc. There is not much going on the mailing list other than options changes. So I assume most does not need core changes, or they are working around them.


I was not talking about the code...it will happen one way or the other...

The problem here are not beryl people. From what i can see they have handled the entire thing very well, staying together and talking with one voice...

The problem is us...Because we have not discussed this among ourselves. I know that you people have different opinions but the fact that we get no info on where you stand makes everything worse. I have read on ML where each one of you stands but if you can not make up your mind about it, why don't you ask the users??? Ask how they would like this community to be from now on...if they want the merge and how they want it to happen.

[iznogood]

As far as the code side goes, most of the plugins have been ported and they are in my tarball in the packages section. There are some extra ones which were split from blurfx (mblur and reflex). Emerald is done too.

So is there one oplace someone can go to get the latest Compiz and all the plugins, including Emerald? Are there instructions? I'm not a big fan of compiling, but I'd like to take a gander. I know there were problems with the Emerald plugin (needing libdecoration or some such thing), has that been addressed?

What is your distro ???

[jackkerouac]

As far as the code side goes, most of the plugins have been ported and they are in my tarball in the packages section. There are some extra ones which were split from blurfx (mblur and reflex). Emerald is done too.

So is there one oplace someone can go to get the latest Compiz and all the plugins, including Emerald? Are there instructions? I'm not a big fan of compiling, but I'd like to take a gander. I know there were problems with the Emerald plugin (needing libdecoration or some such thing), has that been addressed?

What is your distro ???

Ubuntu Edgy. I know there is a howto for installation of basic compiz, but I'm more interested in a howto on getting the latest Compiz with Emerald, animation, etc.

[jug]

Same here. Ubuntu Edgy, fglrx and Xgl
Got the source by:
git clone git://git.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/app/compiz
Then I tried http://www.go-compiz.org/index.php?title=Compiling this, but autogen.sh fails with (or something similar):
autogen.sh: 9: autoreconf: not found
Then i installed automake that fixed this problem. And also tried to install all the dependencies listed for debian (since ubuntu is debian) but this resulted in a broken package:
libwnck-dev: Depends: libwnck18 (= 2.16.1-0ubuntu1) but 2.16.1-0ubuntu1.1awn is to be installed
If I try to compile anyway I get:
autoreconf: Entering directory `.'
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Gettext
autoreconf: running: aclocal
aclocal:configure.ac:24: warning: macro `AM_GLIB_GNU_GETTEXT' not found in library
aclocal:configure.ac:140: warning: macro `AM_GCONF_SOURCE_2' not found in library
autoreconf: configure.ac: tracing
autoreconf: configure.ac: creating directory config
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Libtool
autoreconf: running: /usr/bin/autoconf
configure.ac:18: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PROG_LIBTOOL
If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
See the Autoconf documentation.
configure.ac:24: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_GLIB_GNU_GETTEXT
configure.ac:140: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_GCONF_SOURCE_2
autoreconf: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1

Better luck for you, jackkerouac :)
Sorry for being OT again...

[imnotpc]

Can you(someone) post an official announcememt on the current status of the merging ????
We are working on a statement that describes how we will reunite. It's important that we do this right. We are all anxious to move forward but, just like with coding, a well written statement now will reduce the number of problems we have later.

Jeff

[karmapolice]

Same here. Ubuntu Edgy, fglrx and Xgl
Got the source by:
git clone git://git.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/app/compiz
Then I tried http://www.go-compiz.org/index.php?title=Compiling this, but autogen.sh fails with (or something similar):
autogen.sh: 9: autoreconf: not found
Then i installed automake that fixed this problem. And also tried to install all the dependencies listed for debian (since ubuntu is debian) but this resulted in a broken package:
libwnck-dev: Depends: libwnck18 (= 2.16.1-0ubuntu1) but 2.16.1-0ubuntu1.1awn is to be installed
If I try to compile anyway I get:
autoreconf: Entering directory `.'
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Gettext
autoreconf: running: aclocal
aclocal:configure.ac:24: warning: macro `AM_GLIB_GNU_GETTEXT' not found in library
aclocal:configure.ac:140: warning: macro `AM_GCONF_SOURCE_2' not found in library
autoreconf: configure.ac: tracing
autoreconf: configure.ac: creating directory config
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Libtool
autoreconf: running: /usr/bin/autoconf
configure.ac:18: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PROG_LIBTOOL
If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
See the Autoconf documentation.
configure.ac:24: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_GLIB_GNU_GETTEXT
configure.ac:140: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_GCONF_SOURCE_2
autoreconf: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1

Better luck for you, jackkerouac :)
Sorry for being OT again...

You need autoconf and automake plus build-essential, I'm not sure about the latter because it's been a while since I used Ubuntu.

[Kevin]

Then i installed automake that fixed this problem. And also tried to install all the dependencies listed for debian (since ubuntu is debian) but this resulted in a broken package:
libwnck-dev: Depends: libwnck18 (= 2.16.1-0ubuntu1) but 2.16.1-0ubuntu1.1awn is to be installed


This is because you've installed a patched libwnck to use Awn. You should look for a libwnck-dev package from wherever you got that update libwnck package.

[karmapolice]

And BTW you don't need libwnck patched to use awn, just install the one you have previously and should work.

[RYX]

@jug, jackkerouac, Kevin, karmapolice: I don't want to be disrupting your conversation, but I think the git-installaation is an important topic and it would be great if you could create a separate thread in Q&A for that, thanks :).

EDIT: sorry, jug - I just saw that you already did that :) ...

[jug]

Already did ;)