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

[Matthew Brush]

On 13-11-13 04:12 AM, Frank Lanitz wrote:
> 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 like the idea.
>
> My suggestion:
> We should finish work on 1.24 in near future and release it with 2.16
> dependency. After this we can upgrade to 2.24 or whatever. Also during
> this progress we should really sit down and define a way how to define
> what we are going to support. -> Different thread.
>

+1

And we should also try/confirm ourselves some of the older distros we 
claim to want to support (as listed in your other message), to see if 
it's even possible or feasible to compile a latest Geany from source in 
these cases where the person isn't having the needed permissions to 
install packages (build tools, dev headers, etc) or touch stuff outside 
of $HOME.

I get the feeling a lot of people want to stick to gtk2 just because 
they fear change (or got burned by GNOME3, which uses gtk3) rather than 
being limited by technical reasons. Since the eventual change to gtk3 is 
inevitable, if there's no actual technical reason not to, we should 
probably get cracking on making it work as best as possible in Geany.

Cheers,
Matthew Brush