Modules in GNOME releases on different release cycles

!This page is a draft!

Although we avoid or at least strongly discourage adding new modules to release sets that don't follow the GNOME release schedule, there are many modules from GNOME 2.0 and the early 2.x days that are still on separate schedules. I believe this was partially a compromise made in order to simply allow a regular release cycle to be started. Whatever the reason, it still affects us today (though not everyone is aware of it and it has caused some friction, such as with GnomeMeeting and gnome-i18n a number of releases back). The following modules are on a separate release cycle from GNOME:

• glib, gtk+
• librsvg
• libxml2, libxslt
• ekiga
• libglade
• gstreamer, gst-plugins-base, gst-plugins-good
• wrapper bindings around above libraries (e.g. glibmm, gtkmm etc.)
• the entire java bindings suite

The following modules are completely unmaintained and thus aren't on any release cycle:

• audiofile
• esound
• gnome-mime-data
• scrollkeeper

The following I have no idea about

• intltool
• libIDL
• libart_lgpl
• gnome-speech

I may have missed others. Additionally, there are lots of other modules (whose authors need some gentle nudging) that aren't so great about getting module releases done on time, possibly leaving us with a 2.odd.x tarball for a while during a stable series.

FIXME: There's at least one list somewhere about the reasons it's beneficial to follow the GNOME release cycle in general. Should probably add those reasons here.