[Genesis-devs] Genesis' future

[Frederik Elwert]

Hello everybody,

I’m crossposting this on SyncEvolution and Genesis mailing lists, as it
might be interesting for all.

I am currently thinking about the future direction of Genesis
development. Genesis started with very limited aims: I didn’t want to
open a terminal window in order to execute syncevolution, so Genesis
provided a notification area icon which could start syncs and informed
about the results using libnotify.

Since syncevolution didn’t have a GUI, a simple setup assistant was
added to make it easier to get started with SyncEvolution. And Genesis
allowed for automated syncs.

The situation has changed, though. SyncEvolution now ships its own GUI,
sync-ui. Automated syncs are in the syncevolution core. And
SyncEvolution grows quite fast feature-wise, e.g. Bluetooth sync,
HTTP-Server support, etc. This leads to a situation where I want to
think about the future of Genesis. I can think of two possible
directions:

     1. Make Genesis a full SyncEvolution GUI, which can serve as a
        replacement for sync-ui. Since sync-ui is tailored towards
        Netbooks and looks a bit awkward in a standard GNOME
        environment, having a more desktop-like alternative might be
        appreciated. David’s current work on an Account Manager for
        Genesis leads in this direction, but quite a lot of effort would
        be needed in order to make Genesis nearly as complete as
        sync-ui. (Most visible: Bluetooh support, mostly invisible, but
        important: Error handling.) 
     2. Go back to the roots and leave everything else to sync-ui.
        Genesis could limit itself to providing a status icon for quick
        access and provide notifications. It should then integrate
        tighter with sync-ui (e.g., show notifications also for sync-ui
        triggered syncs, open sync-ui for configuration tasks, etc.).
        First work is done by switching to D-Bus for SE session
        handling.

I currently tend towards the second option. My time for working on
Genesis is limited, and so it makes sense not to duplicate the work that
already was made for sync-ui. But it would also be possible to split
Genesis’ current features into two separate components: A small status
+notification app and a stand-alone application with account management
and all.

Before I definitely decide on this, I would like to hear your opinion:
As developers, but even more as users. What would be your favorite
Genesis?

And if anyone wants to work on Genesis, in one direction or the other,
help is always appreciated.

Cheers,
Frederik


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