[Geany-devel] Use GtkBuilder

[Jiří Techet]

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 13:08, Lex Trotman <elextr at gmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
>> I'm really happy about this change. First we get rid of the horrible
>> old glade editor and second it's the most important step towards
>> making Geany compile under GTK 3. Thanks for your work!
>>
>
> Hi Jiri,

And I'm responding as a member of the Jiri category :-)

>
> How much do you (or anyone) know about supporting both GTK2 and 3,
>
> 1. with the same source,
> 2. with the same binary,
> 3. differing platforms
>
> The reason I ask is that my very preliminary evaluation is that
>
> 1. is possible but may need a bunch of #if sections :(,

Right. For the most common ones it would be best to create some
utility functions that encapsulate the ifdefs so the ifdefs aren't
everywhere.

> 2. is basically impossible >(, and

Right, forget about it.

> 3. is unknown. >?

No idea but I don't expect major issues once (1) is done.

In general it would be best just to try to substitute GTK version in
configure, see what happens and start fixing the errors. I'm really
tempted to try it myself but I'm not sure if I'll have enough time for
that in the following few months. Also for changes like that it would
be better to have git in place for easier merges once the work is
done.

My personal feeling is that the sooner some support for GTK 3 is
added, the better. Of course first, until it is stable and working as
expected, it could be an experimental configure option which ordinary
mortals would be discouraged to use. Meanwhile thanks to the ifdefs
the old GTK 2 code should work as before. And maybe the conversion
will be quite easy - it's just you never know unless you try it, so
it's better to try it to know :-).

Jiri