Re: Converting libraries and plugins to use gtk3

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 8:28 AM, Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com> wrote:
> Any library that links to gtk+, gdk or gdk-pixbuf, that switches to gtk3
> will need to have the new version be separate from and parallel
> installable with the old version.

[ lots of good information elided ]

Wow. Alex, you just sent out the mail that I've been drafting here...

Just a few points I'd like to add:

On the GTK+ modules front, we have made major progress in the last few
days: at-spi2-atk builds modules for both, Bastien did a gtk-engines
2.90 release, and Lennart and Hiroyuki have committed dual-build
patches for libcanberra and librsvg. That means GTK3 applications
should pretty much work and look as expected, as far as loadable
modules are concerned.

Wrt. to libraries linking against GTK+, I want to point out that a
fair number of these are obsolescent, and the ABI break is a perfect
time to port from them to newer GTK+ and GLib features, e.g.

libglade -> GtkBuilder
libsexy -> various GTK+ features
libgnomeui -> various GTK+ features
libunique -> GtkApplication
libbonoboui -> port to dbus, use GDBus

The GTK+ api docs contain migration hints on many of these:
http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/stable/migrating.html
http://library.gnome.org/devel/gio/2.25/migrating.html