[Geany-Devel] RFC: Policy for Glade File Updates

[Dimitar Zhekov]

On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 17:01:09 +0200
Thomas Martitz <thomas.martitz at student.htw-berlin.de> wrote:

> To sum the problem up:
>   - As long as we're still on GTK+ 2.x we won't be able to use upstream 
> Glade (Geany on GTK+3 is fine, btw, thanks for that work).
>   - Worse, only a few older versions work.

This would have been a problem if the new versions were better, which
is questionable, to say the least.

>   - And even more worse, you can't practically interchange glade 
> versions because the generated .xml tends to be ordered differently (I, 
> myself, don't care about that but I understand it makes viewing commit 
> diffs harder).

Not only. Some versions emit some properties and/or element attributes
even if they have the default or non-applicable values. For example, our
Glade current version, whichever it may be, mass produces property
can_focus, property use_action_appearance and signal attribute swapped.

> 3) Fix the icon-names thing (assuming one of us is capable to do so)

The icon creation should be possible with ~15 gtk_icon_*() calls, or
simply by including the icon factory xml fragment in the source and
invoking gtk_builder_add_from_string(). The attachment shoudn't be a
problem either.

> 4) Declare that only our glade copy can be used to change the UI.
> 
> Basically I'm suggesting that we set a glade version in stone which is 
> capable of handling our UI generation and make it mandatory for all 
> contributors. By integrating into the Geany tree it's easy to find and 
> we can make sure it keeps working.

Wait, we had this! A 2.x version which was stable, and even generated C
code. So we didn't need to distribute an extra 625KB .xml file, load it
on startup, and abort if it doesn't exist. And IIRC, the executable was
only a few percent larger.

I know, I know, we won't revert to the old Glade, because the progress
is such a progress, and whoever (Matthew?) wrote the builder code must
be proud if it because it emulates Glade 2.x ui_lookup. So internally
we use 2.x, except for some (find / fif) dialogs, which are constructed
with code... Am I the only one which sees some other problems here?

> Is there a problem with this approach?

Our Glade version will become outdated, and we'll replace it with the
new best thing, because it's <strike>the best</strike> new and shining.
That's the human nature. :)

-- 
E-gards: Jimmy