Re: 2.3 Proposed Features

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Tue, 2003-02-04 at 02:57, Ettore Perazzoli wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-02-04 at 01:32, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 12:08:53AM -0500, Ettore Perazzoli wrote:
> > > Why are we assuming that it's more likely for GNOME to be out on time
> > > than for GTK?  Is there a specific reason why the GTK release cycle has
> > > to be longer?
> > 
> > I guess I just don't buy that GTK 2.4 with its current feature plan
> > will be releasable in time to still get GNOME out on a good
> > schedule. If we dropped the menu/toolbar stuff and the combo stuff
> > maybe. Those two are big, hard, and controversial.  If we do only the
> > filesel plus small stuff I am willing to believe we could do GTK 2.4
> > early enough that GNOME 2.4 could use it.
> 
> The discussion seemed to assume that the GTK 2.4 feature plan was set in
> stone, that's why I was asking if the GTK release cycle couldn't just be
> made shorter.

It would be hard to make it _enough_ shorter. the right target point for
a GTK+ release that's going to be used in GNOME-2.4 is something like 
2 months before Desktop release, so ~ June 1. 4 months
from now. 3 months to go from not having anything agreed upon 
at all to API/ABI frozen is darn short.

If you want an API to be good for 5-10 years, you have to give some
time to settle before you freeze it.

Also, I have concerns with short release cycles in GTK+ as they impact
users and developers. There are definite problems from adding 
API in too small chunks.

Even with upward compatibility, if there gets to be a big mix of users
using GTK+-2.0, GTK+-2.2 and GTK+-2.4, its very hard to know what you
should rely on in your application.

Installing a new version of GTK+ gives people a lot of trouble; just
read gtk-list sometime. Frequent API additions will just increase the
problems here.

And while the feature list for GTK+-2.4 is certainly not set in stone
(except for the filesel), I do think it is worth taking the time to
try and resolve the GtkCombo situation ... it's not as big a problem
from a user's perspective as the filesel, there are pretty extensive
problems with it. (Like the exposed use of GtkList)

Regrads,
                               Owen