Re: Using python + pygtk in Desktop modules (was Re: Revisitingthe Gnome Bindings)

["Murray Cumming" <murrayc murrayc com>]

>   I am currently maintaining gnome-python, and I think we can have an
> API stable gnome-python in gnome 2.10.  In fact, gnome-python 2.6.0 will
> be out soon, and it will be _mostly_ API stable.  Of course, during
> gnome-python 2.6.x the API will be absolutely frozen.
>
>   I'd just like to reserve the right to make API changes in exceptional
> cases where the API is fundamentally broken. 99% of changes between
> gnome-python 2.6 and gnome-python 2.(8|10|whatever) will be API
> compatible.  After that, I think we can promise 100% API compatibility
> in the future.

OK, that's a good way to get towards 100% API/ABI stability. Keep scaring
people, so that they tell you about API problems. I look forward to you
proposing it for GNOME 2.10.

>   This reminds me, what should language bindings do about the egg
> module? Do we wrap it or not? Do we copy-paste the C code into the
> language bindings or not?  This puzzles me...

If the language can not easily use C code directly from applications, then
you have to wrap it. Because libegg is not a shared library, you have to
copy-paste the C code and statically link to that. There's no other way
that I can think of.

But I'd much prefer to see the effort go into moving the libegg parts into
a GTK+ or GNOME library. If it's being used widely then it's probably
almost ready for that.

>> [2] I can imagine two objections:
>>   a) People who want GNOME to use one true runtime, such as Mono, for
>> all
>> high-level languages, might think that this takes us further away from
>> that possibility. But if the one true runtime can really support Python
>> without major changes to application code, then the ideas do not seem to
>> be incompatible.
>
>   Mono can support Python through IronPython, but it has radically
> different API than PyGTK, so that argument unfortunately doesn't apply.

Do you mean that the implementation of PyGtk would be different, or that
the PyGTK API would be different?

Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com