Re: Gtk# in 2.16

[Mike Kestner <mkestner novell com>]

On Mon, 2006-04-24 at 15:47 -0600, Elijah Newren wrote:

> To clarify, this means you're targetting Gtk+-2.10 for Gnome 2.16, right?

Yes.

> Why are you unable to comply with that one -- what would be difficult
> about putting the API/ABI stable bindings into one package and putting
> the other bindings in a separate one?  Wouldn't it just mean that
> people who want to use the extra bindings install both packages?  I
> feel like I'm missing something because I would have assumed this was
> the easiest requirement to comply with (though I'm obviously no expert
> in the area...)

In my opinion, it would just make more work for me to release Gtk# and
more work for our users to download and build it, and more work for our
packagers to package it, etc...  

My recollection of the initial process that defined the rules was that
everyone who commented on that particular rule except for Murray thought
this was not important. 

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/language-bindings/2003-November/msg00013.html

Murray's primary argument seemed to be about the marketing aspects of
guaranteeing API stability which a non-platform lib couldn't do.  The
reality is that we've been able to maintain our API stability guarantee
despite the presence of Desktop libs in our set.

I don't personally see the value of the split between Platform/Desktop
in a language binding.  Maybe if that rule is written in stone, Gtk#
could be added to the Desktop release instead of the Bindings set.  ;-)

FWIW, we have more or less decided that no new libraries will be added
to Gtk# that are not platform libraries, so we would only need an
"exemption" on that rule for the existing binding set.

Technically, gnomeprint is a show-stopper for us.  We expose its API in
gnome-sharp.dll and therefore could not split it out and still maintain
our API stability guarantees.
 
-- 
Mike Kestner <mkestner novell com>