[gentoo-dev] State of Cinnamon & Mate projects

[Joonas Niilola]

Hanno's previous message about the LXDE project made me think other
desktop projects that are facing a bad state in Gentoo: Cinnamon and
Mate. They are both outdated and last I tried, Cinnamon didn't even
build for me (bug open for a ~year now).

  https://repology.org/maintainer/cinnamon%40gentoo.org
    outdated: 86.7 %

  https://repology.org/maintainer/mate%40gentoo.org
    outdated: 97.4 %

Mate doesn't seem to be that much behind. Gentoo has 1.22 and latest
release is 1.24. 1.22 was released 2019-03-18, and 1.24 last month. Many
of the packages are outdated in a sense that these packages have minor
releases, which haven't been packaged in Gentoo. Ie 1.22.3.
There was a 1.23 release in-between, but looks like not many distros
packaged that either. (Might be some full-development version?)

Cinnamon on the other hand is _horribly_ outdated. Gentoo has 4.0 while
latest release is 4.4. And as noted, I couldn't even build it while
trying. 4.0.3 was released in Nov 2018, while the latest 4.4.8 Jan 2020.
The have been _numerous_ releases in between.

Should some general consensus be agreed on whether to keep them or
remove them? I feel like we are lying to any new users installing
Gentoo; When they setup their system and boot into installed DE, they
immediately have to resort to some overlay to update it. While they
should get it from the overlay in the first place. Saying, IF they even
manage to build it (Cinnamon). This came up and was discussed in the
Gentoo forums.

There could be more issues these non-maintained big projects cause, like
enabling elogind distrowide.

cinnamon@g.o has been assigned to 27 open bugs, mate@g.o
to 33.

This message also works as a call-to-arms with these projects. Even if
people decide to rather keep them in ::gentoo, help and some action is
needed.