In a recent email to d-d-l, Owen Taylor gave two goals for the 2.28 release:

1. That Mutter should be developed using the GNOME infrastructure; and
2. That users will be able to choose between gnome-shell and ordinary Metacity.

Some possible ways of doing these were suggested:

• Merge Mutter and Metacity. Have Mutter as a separate compositor within Metacity.  Alternatively, as Colin Walters suggested, make Mutter a separate branch within Metacity’s DVCS.
• Import Mutter as a separate window manager. Remove all the parts in Mutter which are left over from Metacity and don’t work towards Mutter’s goals.  Metacity remains for people who don’t want to run gnome-shell.  Eventually it dies off.
• Forget about Mutter. Whatever we need to do would be done either in Metacity or in gnome-shell using JavaScript plugins.

One advantage of making gnome-shell play nicely with a standard (possibly Mutterised) Metacity is that it would still be possible to switch to other window managers: a great deal of ink was spilt in the discussion over whether users would mind switching away from Compiz, whether the Compiz developers would mind, and whether Compiz was the de facto standard window manager these days.  However, Owen says that gnome-shell requires tighter coupling with the window manager than is usual, and that this isn’t really an option.

The discussion continues…

Photo © Alexander Drachmann, cc-by-sa.

What is it ?

• Metacity is a simple compositing window manager that integrates nicely with GNOME 2.

What’s changed ?

• queue frame resize on window undecorate (Neil)
• fix description of desktop background (Luca ) (GNOME bug 569649)
• wrap g_error calls in braces (Matt)

Translations:
Amitakhya Phukan (as), Mikel González (ast), Ihar Hrachyshka (be@latin), Runa Bhattacharjee (bn_IN), David Planella (ca), Petr Kovar (cs), Ask Hjorth Larsen (da), Christian Kirbach (de), Jennie Petoumenou (el), David Lodge (en_GB), Jorge González (es), Mattias Põldaru (et), Iñaki Larrañaga Murgoitio (eu), Ilkka Tuohela (fi), Claude Paroz (fr), Ankit Patel (gu), Mark Krapivner (he), Rajesh Ranjan (hi), Gabor Kelemen (hu), Luca Ferretti (it), Takeshi AIHANA (ja), Changwoo Ryu (ko), Gintautas Miliauskas (lt), Sangeeta Kumari (mai), Sandeep Shedmake (mr), Wouter Bolsterlee (nl), Manoj Kumar Giri (or), Duarte Loreto (pt), Leonardo Ferreira Fontenelle (pt_BR), Adi Roiban (ro), Yuriy Penkin (ru), Daniel Nylander (sv), I. Felix (ta), Krishna Babu K (te), Theppitak Karoonboonyanan (th), Clytie Siddall (vi), Chao-Hsiung Liao (zh_HK), Chao-Hsiung Liao (zh_TW)

Where can I get it ?

• eafb624e79fbcdab6da59acc222430b1 bz2
• 23b9af5d98ab7ff9f6e88a18aeaf9753 gz

Photo © Geoff Leeming, cc-by-nc. Thanks to Fin for choosing the picture.

Metacity 2.27.0 has just been released.  Since the number 27 is odd, it means the first unstable release on the path to the stable release 2.28 in six months’ time, and not a stable release as the forthcoming 2.26 will be.

What is it ?

• Metacity is a simple compositing window manager that integrates nicely
  with GNOME 2.

What’s changed ?

• Remove deprecated GTK symbols (Thomas A, Matt ) (GNOME bug 572332)
• fix window properties bug which showed up as ignoring struts (Ori ) (GNOME bug 572573)
• include “as username” in window title (Thomas T ) (GNOME bug 549389)
• Use zenity for dialogues (Thomas T ) (GNOME bug 521914)
• Use libcanberra for sound effects (Matthias ) (GNOME bug 557921)
• Don’t define meta_spew_event unless verbose mode is on (Matt ) (GNOME bug 571126)
• Fix README to give correct switch names (Matt ) (GNOME bug 571210)
• Windows which couldn’t appear in alt-tab don’t get there by being urgent (Thomas T)
• Skip the first window in alt-tab only if it’s actually current (Matt ) (GNOME bug 535887)
• Optimise line coordinate storage (Thomas)
• Queue resize on window undecorate (Neil)
• Fix description of “show desktop” (Luca ) (GNOME bug 569649)
• Wrap g_error calls in braces (Matt)

Translations:

• Mikel González (ast), Ihar Hrachyshka (be@latin), David Planella (ca), Petr Kovar (cs), Ask Hjorth Larsen (da), Jorge González (es), Mattias Põldaru (et), Iñaki Larrañaga Murgoitio (eu), Ilkka Tuohela (fi), Claude Paroz (fr), Gabor Kelemen (hu), Kjartan Maraas (nb), Wouter Bolsterlee (nl), Leonardo Ferreira Fontenelle (pt_BR), Daniel Nylander (sv), Theppitak Karoonboonyanan (th), Chao-Hsiung Liao (zh_HK), Chao-Hsiung Liao (zh_TW.po)

What didn’t make it into this version

• Binding buttons (still being tested)
• The RPN parser (still dithering over whether this should go in)

Where can I get it ?

• 52871631cc13b7fde1403aaee3db32d4 bz2
• f856c9d0828baf79de82e9c5d97c30b7 gz

Beautiful shot of Vesuvius and Pompeii © MorBCN, cc-by-nc-sa. Thanks to Fin for choosing the picture and the theme for 2.27.0 release posts.

• Metacity is a simple compositing window manager that integrates nicely with GNOME 2.

What’s changed ?

Thanks to Matthias Claesen, Matt Kraai, Elijah Newren, Owen Taylor, and Thomas Thurman for improvements in this version.

• Optimise window property lookup (Thomas ) (GNOME bug 549886)
• Fix slip in the above (Matt)
• Several memory leaks fixed (Matthias ) (GNOME bug 552303, GNOME bug 552973, GNOME bug 552307)
• Fix longstanding crasher about colourmaps (Owen ) (GNOME bug 568365)
• Alt+middle/right buttons can be switched (Thomas ) (GNOME bug 437910)
• Support _NET_WM_MOVERESIZE_CANCEL (Elijah)
• minor fix paving the way for a theme editor (Thomas)

Translations:

• David Planella (ca), Jorge González (es), Mattias Põldaru (et), saudat mohammed (ha), Yuval Tanny (he), Gabor Kelemen (hu), Onye, Sylvester (ig), Changwoo Ryu (ko), Raivis Dejus (lv), Kjartan Maraas (nb), Daniel Nylander (sv), Fajuyitan, Sunday Ayo (yo), 甘露 (Gan Lu) (zh_CN)

Where can I get it ?

• b7f51a8144584f51434b8775216bc2c5 bz2
• 9ef9e03e4b961b1e694223a67f1ebe8b gz

Photo © bluebus, cc-by-nc-nd.

• Metacity is a simple compositing window manager that integrates nicely with GNOME 2.

What’s changed ?

• The maximisation key is a toggle. (Thomas ) (GNOME bug 343824)
• “Unmaximise” is now called “restore”. (Thomas ) (GNOME bug 343824)
• New thread handling call for gconf (Frederic ) (GNOME bug 565517)
• Add screenshot commands back which had been removed (Yanko ) (GNOME bug 565343)
• move_to_corner_se keybinding fixed (Thomas)
• Windows on other workspaces which attempt to present themselves are marked as needing attention (Colin ) (GNOME bug 482354)
• End the grab op when the user clicks the titlebar (Thomas ) (GNOME bug 401028)

Translations:

• Jorge González (es)

Where can I get it ?

• 1d083549efdcdc6aad4eaada1c3ff86a bz2
• bc33e1b609914cf60ce7aff549df2538 gz

Photo: Lower Red Lion, St Albans. Photo by Gary Houston, public domain.

• Metacity is a simple compositing window manager that integrates nicely
  with GNOME 2.

What’s changed ?

• Fixes to allow building without compositor again (Thomas)
• Fixes for -Wall problems (Thomas)
• Various tool updates (Thomas)

Translations:

• None.

Where can I get it ?

• 933699f7ce80b5269cc9880f338e328b

  http://download.gnome.org/sources/metacity/2.25/metacity-2.25.21.tar.bz2

• 8d183983e25cde2cc27875b238465514

  http://download.gnome.org/sources/metacity/2.25/metacity-2.25.21.tar.gz

• Metacity is a simple compositing window manager that integrates nicely
  with GNOME 2.

What’s changed ?

• Add casts to fix failure to build from source on 64bit hosts (Thomas)
  (GNOME bug 562106)
• Added script to produce annoucements (Thomas) [like the one you're reading now]

Translations:

• Jorge González (es)

Where can I get it ?

• a697887086a86fb279267cc62874c80e bz2
• 220dc1f393f26f5bed06e8a7980e6a94 gz

What’s changed ?
Thanks to Brian Cameron, Maxim Ermilov, Daniel Macks, Elijah Newren, Frederic Peters, Thomas Thurman, David Trowbridge, and Olav Vitters for improvements in this version.

• Reorder compiler flags (Daniel ) (GNOME bug #562033)
• Fix compositor switch (Daniel ) (GNOME bug #560990)
• Remove spurious warnings about operations on window “none” (Thomas)
• Fix _POSIX_C_SOURCE which was breaking OS X builds (Thomas ) (GNOME bug #561962)
• -Werror -Wall and -ansi are now standard compile flags (Thomas)
• Merge screen and window keybindings files; fix minor alt-tab bug in the process (Thomas ) (GNOME bug #528337)
• Support _NET_WM_FULLSCREEN_MONITORS (David)
• Remove some deprecated calls (Thomas ) (GNOME bug #560445)
• Clean up #includes (Maxim ) (GNOME bug #560449)
• Update description of raise_on_click (Elijah)
• First dialogue delegated to zenity (Thomas)
• fix theme-parser typo (Olav)
• double-quote variable names in messages (Thomas ) (GNOME bug #558309)
• fix accidental renaming of run_command_terminal (Thomas ) (GNOME bug #557943)
• some null checks; problems exposed by new GDM (Brian ) (GNOME bug #558058)
• ignore mouse button modifier if it’s missing (Thomas ) (Launchpad bug #258054, Launchpad bug #266929)
• fix docbook markup (Frederic)

Translations
Astur (ast), Jorge González (es), Thomas Thurman (la), Leonardo Ferreira Fontenelle (pt_BR), Daniel Nylander (sv)

Where can I get it ?

• da7fabe176eb971516a5d56bd6f3633b  bz2
• 1c74488bd59b1876f4dd34a5f736ba0b  gz

Thanks to Murray Cumming, Thomas Thurman, and Götz Waschk for improvements in this version.

• Fix distcheck (Thomas ) (GNOME bug 557356)
• add libm reference (Götz ) (GNOME bug 557357)
• fix docbook tags (Murray ) (GNOME bug 557337)

3b75c97082aa3a178d8cbb61c940cb59  metacity-2.25.3.tar.bz2
92be1a957eaef575e78e3410c004e92d  metacity-2.25.3.tar.gz

What is it ?
Metacity is a simple compositing window manager that integrates nicely with GNOME 2.

What’s changed ?
Thanks to Joe Marcus Clarke, Murray Cumming, Tomas Frydrych, William Lachance, Matthew Martin, Christian Persch, Thomas Thurman, and Vincent Untz for improvements in this version.

• Add handler for SIGTERM (Joe ) (GNOME bug 553980)
• Minimised windows are necessarily obscured (Matthew ) (GNOME bug 528927)
• Build fixes with the above (Christian, Tomas, Thomas ) (GNOME bug 557335) ( GNOME bug 557201) ( GNOME bug 469361)
• Changed keybindings to be in a single place (Thomas ) (GNOME bug 469361)
• Add new document about themes (Murray)
• Remove obsolete support for fallback icons (Thomas)
• Pass modified mouse events to panels (William ) (GNOME bug 554428)
• Change where desktop files should go (Vincent ) (GNOME bug 549479)

Translations
Yavor Doganov (bg), David Planella (ca), Kenneth Nielsen (da), Hendrik Richter (de), Ivar Smolin (et), Claude Paroz (fr), Seán de Búrca (ga), Launchpad Translations Administrators (hr), Gabor Kelemen (hu), Thomas Thurman (la), Žygimantas Beručka (lt), Kjartan Maraas (nb), Duarte Loreto (pt), Djavan Fagundes (pt_BR), Mugurel Tudor (ro), Pavol Šimo (sk), Laurent Dhima (sq), Горан Ракић (sr), Theppitak Karoonboonyanan (th), Funda Wang (zh_CN)

Where can I get it?
Don’t.  Use 2.25.3.

98f5039beebdb3bca5d3be7f0fd93d95  metacity-2.25.2.tar.bz2
f1fa487eea2213a2ac3e6c7c4d6fe3d0  metacity-2.25.2.tar.gz