unreleased g-wrap considered harmful

[Greg Troxel]

The build of guile-gnome-platform 2.7.99 in pkgsrc is failing with
various problems that I think are due to gnome having moved since 2.7.99
was released, but I get the impression I can't update to 2.15.90 because
pkgsrc has, umm, the latest released g-wrap (1.9.6).  Does 2.15.90 need
1.9.6, as http://www.gnu.org/software/guile-gnome/dev/ says, or is it
before the jump into using unreleased dependencies.

I feel like I've been complaining a lot over the years, but it's been
hard to use guile-gnome-platform because of these sorts of issues.  To
make this accessible via packaging systems, and hence to those  who
haven't made a conscious choice to spend a lot of time,  it's necessary
for the code to be packager-friendly.  That means 

1) having releases often enough that people aren't silly to run the
   latest release, and
 
2) only depending on other releases, so that if a packaging system has
   an old prereq you can look them in the eye and say "That's old, and
   you should update it."


(This was all triggered because I got a report of guile-gnome-platform
failing to build in pkgsrc bulk builds after gnome was updated to 2.18.)


On the plus side, I was able to checkout the code via bzr by simply
installing bazaar from pkgsrc and cut/pasting the instructions at
http://www.gnu.org/software/guile-gnome/dev/
I really appreciate this being easier than it used to be.

    Greg
    (a guile user for longer than I can remember)