[Geany-Devel] A direction for Geany

[Matthew Brush]

On 13-11-15 11:19 AM, Dimitar Zhekov wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Nov 2013 19:19:05 -0800
> Matthew Brush <mbrush at codebrainz.ca> wrote:
>
>> [snip]

>> Lots of users actually *want* Geany to move to Gtk3, for various reasons
>> such as using the same theme as the rest of their desktop (see what Gtk
>> version the top 3 Linux distros are using) or to get better/any Wayland
>> or support, or for various other reasons.
>
> What stops them from using Geany with gtk+3?
> What do you mean by "move to gtk+3" - drop gtk+2 ASAP? Why not let the
> package maintainers for the different distributions decide whether to
> build Geany for 2 or 3?
>

With the Gtk3 configure option default to off, I worry it will continue 
to be considered "experimental" and left off by packagers and/or that it 
will get enough testing.

Also when you go to fix/cleanup/improve something you have to be so 
careful with the functions used (moreso than with newer versions) 
because so many were added long after the versions we support even 
though many people have been using them for years. What's more, there's 
a whole host of nice APIs (even widgets, some being nice) available 
since Gtk2 days that in my experience make application development 
cleaner and easier, that we can't even begin to support while needing to 
maintain Gtk2 compatiblity. And even those newer stuff we can support it 
requires a bunch of #ifdef guards and extra work/code-paths, which often 
makes it not even worthwhile.

Additionally, I don't think GObject-Introspection really properly 
supports pre-Gtk3, so all plans for the plugin API improvements are on 
hold until then.

As I mentioned in another thread/message, at least bumping to the very 
last version of Gtk2 for now would allow to cleanup a bunch of the old 
code and also to use some APIs that appeared in late Gtk2 (or GLib from 
that time).

>> [snip]
>
>> FWIW, I'm not actually advocating that Gtk3 is better than Gtk2, I'm
>> advocating it doesn't change the fact that, for better or worse, Gtk3 is
>> the current version of our toolkit library (for quite some time now) and
>> complaining about it won't change anything.
>
> Perhaps you missed my mail from Nov 14 in the "Gtk2 vs Gtk3" thread,
> it contains exact percents of how current gtk+3 is, and how the gtk+
> packages dropped overall big time.
>

I read it, but didn't understand the point you were making in the 
context of the part you were replying to about whether people were 
actually using really old distros that *don't* support Gtk3, that is, 
they have no libgtk3 installed/available or whether they just don't like 
GNOME/Gtk3 (which, IMO, is not useful/relevant reason to hold back on 
Gtk2, it's only postponing the inevitable, as mentioned).

> But with all that said, you are right that such a discussion will lead
> us nowhere. I'll read your answer, if there is any, and that'll be it.
> Hopefully it'll contain some directions as to when Geany is going
> gtk+3 only. The "Gtk2 vs Gtk3" percents may be a good starting point.
>

If it were up to me (it's obviously not), we'd bump to very last Gtk2 
after next release (1.24), moving towards going completely Gtk3 after 
the release that follows it (1.25). Also, I'd enable Gtk3 support by 
default after the next release, including using Gtk3 bundle in Win32 
build, and leaving Gtk2 support as "legacy", if it were my call.

Cheers,
Matthew Brush