Re: GNOME 3.0 in March 2011

[John Stowers <john stowers lists gmail com>]

On Sat, 2010-08-07 at 13:24 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 12:20, John Stowers <john stowers lists gmail com> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2010-08-07 at 11:12 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> >>
> >> Alternatively, if distros were able to support the combination
> >> Python2+Gtk2+PyGObjectWithIntrospection
> >
> > Just to be clear, do you mean that distributions will likely ship
> >
> > Python2+PyGtk2+(Gtk2-.gir)+(PyGobjectWithIntrospection+(Gtk3+.gir))
> >
> > next cycle? I.e. GObject introspection support should be disabled for
> > Gtk2 builds?
> 
> This is getting confusing ;)

Agree.

> 
> My understanding is that both Fedora 14 and Ubuntu Maverick will ship with:
> 
> - gobject-introspection
> - pygobject with introspection support

Good, but,

> - typelibs for gtk2
> - python 2.x
> 
> This means that authors of pygtk-based applications will be able to
> port their apps to introspection in those distros without having to
> build additional software.

I think this combination is not very useful. We are telling python
developers to port a pygtk app (that already works) to the new pygobject
gobject-introspection api, and all they will get is a slightly different
way of accessing the same gtk-2.X API, but likely also a new set of bugs
to deal with. That is not to say that pygobject+gobject introspection is
buggy, but surely it won't be perfect to start with.

I think a better story is to tell people that they should port their
pygtk apps to pygobject+gobject-introspection and then they get gtk-3
new features, new API, and ponies for free. 

This means I suggest typelibs for gtk-2 should not be built, they should
only be built for gtk-3. Distros will need to ship both gtk versions,
but I expect they will do that anyway (or gtk-2.90 snapshots at least).

> 
> If we told them to port their apps to Gtk3 and Python 3 ASAP, they
> would need to build stuff, so probably lots of people would wait 6
> months more to start porting. So most ported apps would start
> appearing in distros in +12 months.

I am not sure what implications the Python3 stuff would have.

John