Re: Using python + pygtk in Desktop modules

[Jens Bech Madsen <jbmadsen wibble dk>]

On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 18:04 -0400, Sean Middleditch wrote:

[snip]

> The problem I see is if distros don't *also* always include the older
> releases of the bindings, third party apps, while they may not break on
> an upgrade, may not be installable on newer distributions, because the
> bindings aren't available.
> 
> Say I develop an app for GNOME 2.4 and gtkmm 2.4.  It installs and works
> fine on today's machines.  Now, a year down the road, a user has Fedora
> Core 5 installed with GNOME 2.12 and gtkmm 2.12.  They try to install my
> app, but it doesn't work, because there is no gtkmm 2.4 package for FC5.
> If my app were developed against the C bindings, it would work fine
> (assuming the glibc/gcc people didn't decide to screw users again).

[snip]

> I'm not sure there's a whole lot of room left in this debate.  This
> seems less an issue of fact vs fact and more one of opinion vs opinion;
> I value ABI stability above _almost_ anything else when it comes to a
> development platform.

So basically what you are saying is that we should have no development
platform at all because noone can absolutely 100% guarantee ABI
stability forever and ever?

If that is not the case, what are your criteria here? Is it okay to
allow a language which breaks ABI once per year/two years/decade?

And let's remember what we started out with: Can we include Python apps
in the Desktop release? You keep talking about third-party apps. In this
context the Desktop release is not third-party apps. I feel pretty
confident that the writers of Desktop apps are capable of fixing
problems with incompatible Python versions. They certainly are when the
issue is C-compilers accepting different languages.

/Jens