On 03/10/2013 15:37, Lex Trotman wrote:
- holding us at an unreasonably old GTK version
Sorry? I don't think Windows support has anything to do with the GTK version we support. If anything, it's rather the contrary, providing a newer version for Windows installers is far easier than forcing users of old GNU/Linux distros to build a new version.
Well, as I understand it, moving the windows packages to GTK 2.24 is the only thing holding us at 2.16. As there was a deathly hush on the ML thread when volunteers were requested to try it, I guess nobody is willing to support it, even just for that.
I'm not sure that was the main reason, I argued that LTS distros was a reason for keeping older dependencies. I expect there are newer runtimes, I heard gtk 3 on Windows works reasonably well since last year or so.
In any case, if we want to up the dependencies, don't deliberately drop Windows support.
- hard to maintain due to being hacks on top of hacks
Again, spawning code (only?)
Again 10% of open bugs.
Just because there are unresolved bugs doesn't mean we should drop a platform.
User: 'Your software doesn't work right' Dev: 'Forget it, we're going to stop releases for your platform'
- few of the developers have access to a representative development
setup (no WinXP on a VM is hardly representative)
I indeed don't, but AFAIK Nick and Matthew does
And I should add, its not reasonable if you are the only one either, the fixes needed to windows will deprive the rest of Geany of any of your effort. Its not as if there are no other things to do:)
A slightly broken Windows version is infinitely better than none at all. I use it and don't experience any significant issues that can't be worked around.
Anyway, although I agree the Windows version isn't as good as it should right now, I don't really see the problem it causes to the rest of Geany. And if we indeed clean some things up a little like Matthew suggests, it could even be just fine (Windows dialogs, come on).
I don't mind if Matt wants to remove the Windows dialogs. Enrico put them in, I think they're not really necessary.
Again, the issue is, without anybody to do it, all that happens is that the rest of Geany gets less love.
Lots of people over the years have put forward suggestions, but none of them have even dropped a PR or patch, let alone assisted with maintenance. Its not nice to cut off a platform, but if everybody expects others to do the work, then we may have no choice or the whole project will collapse.
^^^ *Massive* exaggeration. Most open source projects have unresolved bugs. Unfunded open source projects work mostly because developers fix problems that they themselves experience. I don't see any significant problems with the Windows version that affect me.
I'm not saying delete anything inside #ifdef OS_WIN32 tomorrow. But also in fairness some warning that platform specific code is not being maintained adequately needs to be given to Windows users, and their help sought, and this is one way I can think of that makes it clear. Other suggestions are welcome:)
You are massively overreacting. If we really cared so much about user experience we would make more bugfix releases, but we don't have the resources for that.