[Geany-Devel] Gtk2 vs Gtk3 (was. Re: A direction for Geany)

Thomas Martitz thomas.martitz at xxxxx
Wed Nov 13 10:35:08 UTC 2013


Am 13.11.2013 11:22, schrieb Thomas Martitz:
> Am 13.11.2013 01:21, schrieb Matthew Brush:
>> That's a fair[1] argument *if* those old distros aren't shipping GTK3 
>> binaries/libraries (I can't say whether they are or not), otherwise 
>> it's a bogus point because then we're only talking about a very very 
>> small number of users who (all of these must apply, not just some):
>>
>> - Use an old, nearly end-of-life enterprise distro
>> - Don't have admin rights or clout enough to get admins to install 
>> newer versions of stuff
>> - Need to compile Geany from source, from the absolutely bleeding 
>> edge head of Git, rather than using the version they're "supposed to" 
>> as available from their distro and supported by their IT personnel
>> - Refuse to take a few hours to compile newer GTK+ stack in $HOME
>> - Can't or don't want to run a virtual machine, bootstick or live 
>> distro to get access to more modern software
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Matthew Brush
>>
>> [1]: Well not completely fair, because they're making Geany 
>> development harder and holding back progress/improvements for the 
>> sake of having to use latest Geany releases instead of older, stable 
>> and supported versions, and even then still need to be able compile 
>> from source code and permissions to install development packages and 
>> such which I imagine are unlikely to be pre-installed for them by 
>> their sysadmins.
>
>
> I'm *really really really* tired of this topic. This comes up every 
> now and then, with the same bulled points over and over and with no 
> outcome at all (we're still at 2.16 after a couple of discussions even 
> though nobody explicitly says we need to be at this specific version).
>
> Can't we just define a simple rule that's written out somewhere as to 
> which GTK+ version to support. I don't mean a specific version number 
> but a rule like "The one released X years/month ago" or "the version 
> shipped in (enterprise) distro ABC" or "re-evaluated in a grand IRC 
> meeting every Y month". This would mean implicit bumping of the 
> minimum (by accepting patches that bump the minimum while observing 
> the rule) as required. Then we don't have to have this tiresome 
> argument over and over.


I'd like to add that this is an issue that really puts off existing and 
potential contributors (see Matthew's document-messages work which is 
awesome but stalled) because it's unclear whether it's worthwhile to 
work on something that requires a newer gtk. It's unclear because we 
have no process for evaluating and eventually bumping the minimum gtk 
version and a contributor cannot know if or when the gtk version will be 
bumped to meet the changes he has in mind.

The current process of "do the change and we'll see" followed by having 
the same discussion over compatibility again without result is terrible 
for everyone involved.

Best regards.


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