Building multiple backends on on same system

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

With the rise of wayland, and perhaps with my html5 backend
(http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2010/11/23/gtk3-vs-html5/) we will
increasingly be in the situation where a single system will have
multiple versions of gtk+ installed for different backends.

This is handled pretty badly atm. Each app or library that links to gtk+
will have to be recompiled and the binaries duplicated, even if most
stuff don't use weird backend-specific hacks and thus could really be
reused.

In my opinion we should move all the supported public entrypoints to the
core gdk library and make the backend a loadable module. I'm not sure
how exactly we should expose e.g. the X specific stuff, but I think it
would be doable with some kind of loose coupling like an interface.

-- 
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 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
       alexl redhat com            alexander larsson gmail com 
He's an immortal coffee-fuelled senator on a mission from God. She's a 
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