Re: [Gimp-developer] What about switching from Gtk+ to Qt

[Shlomi Fish <shlomif shlomifish org>]

Hi Mukund,

On Sun, 29 Jul 2012 16:39:19 +0530
Mukund Sivaraman <muks banu com> wrote:

> Hi Shlomi
> 
> On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 01:21:03PM +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > In any case, I would be willing to work on porting GIMP's build system to
> > CMake, as long as there is a general agreement from GIMP's developers that
> > CMake will be available in addition or instead of GNU Autotools (so I won't
> > work for naught).
> 
> Automake has served GIMP well so far. 

I recall running into many problems with the Automake/Autoconf/libtool/etc.
setup on many projects, including the breaking of a lot of
backwards-compatibility and forward-compatibility. I don't recall anything
specific with GIMP in particular, but it can happen.

> We also have several people who
> know automake well enough to help other developers if they are unable
> to find their way.  

Well, I know CMake pretty well, and CMake is much easier to learn than
Autohell. It took me less time to convert Freecell Solver’s build system from
GNU Autotools to CMake than it did to originally autoconfiscate it (and that
was with learning CMake on the fly and without knowing it beforehand). A
different developer on Freenode's ##programming testified a similar experience
with his own project.

> Do we need to change to CMake?  Nobody has given
> reasons so far, just assumed that we'd like to switch to CMake.  It
> would substitute one hell for another.

Well, I have given many reasons here:

http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/autohell/

You should have followed and read the link.

This reminds me of Larry Wall's analogy of a ball in a local minima that can
exert some effort into climbing a hill and then reaching an even lower pit
where it will be happier (but thinks that the higher pit is fine).

And I should note that CMake is in no way a hell. I never really liked GNU
Autotools but thought I needed to use it because that was the only sane
solution. Then I discovered CMake and now I'm much happier.  

BTW, we can keep the old Autotools-based setup for the time being in case we
want it because it can co-exist along with the CMake-based one.

> 
> Same applies for Qt. 

I never said I support switching GIMP to Qt.

> These suggestions keep coming up again and again.
> GIMP should be rewritten in C++, GIMP should use some other new thing,
> etc.  Many times I look at how GIMP does something (in its tree) as an
> example of how to do something nearly perfectly.

Well, we can keep the way GIMP does things as it is just fine and just add a
CMake-based build system.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
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