Re: Removing C++ SDK examples, clearly encouraging Python extensions (was: LibreOffice prints on tuesdays)

On Tue, 2013-04-02 at 11:33 +0200, Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> Also -- and this is a proposal for the ESC to discuss: I would like to remove
> the C++ examples there. Im not kidding, April fools is over in my time zone.
>
> I tried hard to make them work and just couldnt get them to build (trying it on
> Windows, just to make things more interesting).  Right now, it is orders of
> magnitude easier to just work on core repo that to try write UNO-stuff against
> a standalone SDK. As contributors might assume otherwise ('If building an
> extension is this hard, working on the core product must be impossible') this
> kills us possible contributors.

I would be all for your point.

> So right now:
> - C++ extensions are essentially useless: they have a higher barrier to entry
>   than the core product
> - Python extensions have the lowest barrier to entry

Yeah, pushing for Java and Python extensions is good as it would target
almost all the potential extension developers.

To push people to hack on python extensions, we would need to provide
them tools and documentation to do it. While documentation is a possibly
a matter of gathering nice examples and updating old pyuno docs,
providing tools is different. IMHO what would be needed:

  * make uno-skeletonmaker generate python code skeleton
  * add python support to ooeclipse using pydev (or add UNO support to a
python IDE)

--
Cedric