Re: Using python + pygtk in Desktop modules

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 16:27 -0400, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 23:44 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> > I think you're saying that 2.3.2 might break apps that previously used
> > 2.3.1. Even if it's happened by accident in the past, I'd be very
> > surprised if this is policy.
> 
> No.  I'm saying 2.3 might break apps that ran in 2.2.

[snip]
> Regarding ABI stability... given that we maintain ABI stability, and
> that Python breaks that, as third-party developers cannot target GNOME
> but must target a specific OS/release, does that not break the entire
> goal of ABI stability? 

[snip]

> Here's a list of language-level incompatibilities for 2.1 to 2.2.
> http://www.sourcekeg.co.uk/www.python.org/2.2.3/bugs.html

Python 2.2 -> Python 2.3 is equivalent to GTK+ 1.2 -> GTK+
2.0/2.2/2.4/2.6. They install in parallel. It's not a problem.

Are you just complaining that Python makes these "major" parallel-
installable ABI changes more often, or are you objecting to their
version numbering scheme being different to GNOME's.

Re. the frequency of major ABI jumps (such as GTK+ 1.2 to GTK+ 2.0): the
Platform Bindings are not expected to do this only when the C libraries
do it, because that's not appropriate for all languages - for instance,
it was impossible to keep ABI in gtkmm when we wrapped new stuff in GTK+
2.4, so we did a new parallel-installable version. Obviously that
introduces some small difficulties for developers who want to use newer
versions as easily as possible, but it's not that big a deal, and it
doesn't break applications if the developer does nothing.

Here are the Platform Bindings rules, if you are interested:
http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/bindings/rules.html
 
-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com