My experience based on my consulting customers is that they run old versions or Red Hat mostly, with only security updates added.  Even point releases are viewed with suspicion, that is likely to mean they have to hire me to re-compile their crusty old business apps to new libraries since their own devs don't understand them. :)


On 21 April 2013 05:13, Matthew Brush <mbrush@codebrainz.ca> wrote:
On 13-04-20 09:52 AM, Nick Treleaven wrote:
On 20/04/2013 16:06, Matthew Brush wrote:
On 13-04-20 05:59 AM, Harold Aling wrote:
On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 1:40 AM, Lex Trotman <elextr@gmail.com> wrote:
Agree with Thomas, we should go to 2.24 for windows since we supply the
bundle, Linux doesn't need to go so far, for eg what GTK did the
current red
hat and suse enterprise versions release with, expect 2.18 or 2.20.

I might be stepping completely out of line with this remark: Do people
with dusty old GTK's use bleeding edge Geany?

Yes
 

It is rumored that some percentage (remember 0 is a percent :) of users
are apparently stuck on ancient enterprise distros at work, need to use
the latest bleeding edge Geany at all times, and are able install it but
not GTK+ from source into $HOME. Or so the story goes :)

Nobody knows how, let alone is allowed, to modify such fundamental software, even in their own home dir.
 

I imagine building newer GTK/GLib from source with only old dependencies
would be a pain in the arse, having to grab and build all the newer
dependencies too. It's also a pain for most users to install and manage
multiple versions of libraries. Geany is actually very easy to build as
it only requires Gtk/GLib.


It is a pain, but I'm more skeptical about what percentage of users are in this situation. Just thinking about the specific criteria you'd have to meet to be in this minority of users:

* Running old but still supported enterprise distro

tick
 
* No ability/access to install a separate system GTK+

tick, tick
 
* Aren't satisfied with the Geany in the repos

0.18 or older, no way, tick
 
* Need to run the absolute latest Geany from release or Git

Release yes, tick
 
* Aren't willing to compile/install GTK+ stack into $HOME but are for Geany, but not for most other popular GTK+ software which requires newer GTK+.

You already said that, tick again
 

Or, in the case of Windows:

* Need to run absolute latest Geany from release or Git

Release yes tick
 
* Required to have a specific old system-wide GTK+

It will be whatever we bundle, each app has its own bundle
 
* Unable to install a newer GTK+ specifically for Geany or

Whats a GTK?
 
* Unwilling to used the bundled GTK+ that comes with Geany

Well, its bundled, so thats it
 
* Not using lots of other GTK+ software that requires newer GTK+

Whats a GTK?

For windows there is less of a problem since we, and every other app, supply a bundle including GTK.  So the windows release can go to 2.24 (the new recommended release) without too much pain.
 

So for some possibly insignificant number of Geany users (possibly even approaching 0 users), who still technically have a path to use latest Geany, albeit with some hassle (building GTK stack), we (contributors/developers) have to:

The path of building GTK does not exist in corporate, it is not allowed, and web app designers don't know how to do it.

 

* Quadruple check every GTK+ function we call, referring to out of date documentation in some cases, to ensure we don't use API from the last 4 years or

tick
 
* Ensure all new code using API from the last 4 years is #if'd-out so that they work with both latest and ancient GTK+.

tick
 
* Maintain more stuff in the gtkcompat.h header to fake out a bunch of core and plugin code so we can also build against latest GTK+.

tick
 
* Have a separate old GTK+ on our dev. machines besides modern ones to test all changes against (although I don't do this personally).

no, but the nightly does for us, 
 

IMO, the benefits to current and potential contributors and users of updating to a relatively modern min. GTK+ 2 version outweighs the negatives to some unknown small percentage of users.

Well, who knows what percentage?  We are talking real users, they will not be on this list, and might not be on the user list.  They just use software, they are not involved with it like we are.
 

Even Puppy Linux has had GTK+ 2.24 for the last two releases[1].

And that is irrelevant, a more effective question is, what does Red Hat 6.0 have?  (thats a real question, my quick look at their website couldn't identify what it is)  

Red Hat 6.0, released in 2010, is still currently in its phase one support and is still considered bleeding edge by many corporates, Red Hat 5.0 is still supported but is outside its phase one so I think its safe to ignore it now.


Cheers
Lex


</rant>

Cheers,
Matthew Brush

[1] http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=puppy

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