Re: ARC & GNOME [Was: How we make decisions...]

[Billy Biggs <vektor dumbterm net>]

Mike Hearn (mike navi cx):

> On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 15:23:16 -0800, Ed Hunter wrote:
>  
> > I'd like to spend some time trying to classify/understand the types
> > of issues you all run into.  Is there someone who could give me some
> > history on problems that the community has run into in terms of
> > compatibility between components in the last six months to a year
> > say?
> 
> - Ongoing menus b0rkage
> - File associations changes

  Hope these are useful.  I'll add to Mike's list some of the
interesting GNOME compatibility issues we've seen recently in Eclipse.

  1. pkg-config often brings in libraries which you don't use, which can
     break binaries when they disappear.

     - Using `pkg-config --libs libgnome-2.0` on GNOME 2.2 brings in
       liblinc, which is gone on GNOME 2.4 and up.

         http://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=76612
         http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=268314

     - libpangoxft was optional in GNOME 2.2 and below.

         http://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=68732

  2. "There is a single unambiguous way to detect if there currently is
     a GNOME compliant Window Manager running."
       - http://developer.gnome.org/doc/standards/wm/c4.html

     This document says you can depend on _WIN_SUPPORTING_WM_CHECK,
     This is no longer set on newer GNOME versions, and broke Eclipse's
     GNOME integration.  Announcing supported spec versions and ensuring
     they are backwards compatible might be useful here.

         http://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=56144

  3. The MIME type stuff is changing, but I don't know if the migration
     plan is clear for applications.

         http://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=79268

  4. Themes tend to break things in unknown ways.  I don't know how to
     approach this problem from a compatibility standpoint, besides
     having more themes to test against, and having good test suites for
     theme designers.

        gtk-qt theme crashes Eclipse
          http://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=77928

        KDE colour bug
          http://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=66815

        button size problem
          http://vektor.ca/eclipse/gtk-button-size.html
          http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=148154

  -Billy