Re: dependable libwnck

[Dan Winship <danw gnome org>]

On 07/15/2009 04:41 AM, Richard Henwood wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I'm developing an application which current has 'libwnck' as the only external dependency which is not part of the Gnome dependable dependencies as listed on:
> 
> http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentyseven/ExternalDependencies

As others have pointed out, it is part of the Desktop release set.

You may be concerned/confused by the required

    #define WNCK_I_KNOW_THIS_IS_UNSTABLE

Basically this means "we reserve the right to change the API between
releases if it's necessary for some other GNOME component". From the
point of view of someone trying to use libwnck as a dependency, that
means that if you write your app against libwnck 2.26, you can't
necessary assume it will still compile with libwnck 2.28, so basically
you have to commit to putting out new releases of your program in sync
with the GNOME release cycle.

I haven't looked at libwnck in a while, but if you look through the git
history and it turns out that people haven't needed to break the API
very much in recent years, then you might be able to convince the
maintainers to declare its API stable so that you can more easily depend
on it from outside GNOME.

-- Dan