Re: gtk 2.8 for gnome 2.12

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

Hey Miguel,

On Wed, 2005-07-20 at 17:17 -0400, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> > This was sort of already decided in the thread, but after the release
> > team meeting today, we figured it was worth mentioning officially.
> > 
> > GNOME 2.12 *will* depend on gtk 2.8.
> 
> This seems to add significant risk to Gnome 2.12 and I believe its
> reckless for Gnome to do such a release in the light of breaking up with
> the published plans that we have presented to various consumers of
> Gnome. 

Having GTK+ 2.8 along with GNOME 2.12 was *always* the plan. Just that
some people seemed to have cold feet.

> There are only a few weeks left until Gnome 2.12 (six weeks) and
> introducing a large change like this as late in the process seems like a
> bad idea because this adds a significant risk to Gnome:
> 
> 	* The new Gtk 2.8 API is not mature.

There's practically no new APIs to use for applications in GTK+ 2.8.
Certainly, it's a *tiny* API addition compared to 2.6.
See the new APIs for 2.8:
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/ix06.html
compared to the new ones in 2.6:
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/ix05.html

> 	* This breaks the published schedule, new features and modules
> 	  were supposed to be locked-down on July 13th:

Well, let's postpone everything by a week. Meagre change on the scale of
a 6-month schedule.

> 	* The UI freeze for applications is five days from now, it
> 	  seems reckless to inform developers that:

This was probably a bad idea, I must admit.

> I would like to propose that adopting Gtk+ 2.8 should happen after each
> module has branched for the 2.12 release which means that applications
> will get another 4-5 months of testing of Gtk+ and Gtk+ 2.8 will get 4-5
> months of testing of APIs that until today have not been adopted by a
> single application.

Again, read the API changes, you'll probably change your mind. The
biggest difference between 2.6 and 2.8 is the adoption of Cairo, and
that seems to have gotten quite a bit of testing, and a lot of bugs
crushed as a result.

And I want GNOME 2.12 with Cairo goodness. Even if very few apps can
take advantage of Cairo itself, the fact that it will become available
with GNOME 2.12 means third-party application developers can target it
knowing the users do have those libraries available.

Postponing a version of GNOME with Cairo means that it will probably
take another 6 months to a year before it hits the desktops, and the
application developers that aren't sitting on the bleeding edge.

Cheers

---
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>