Re: [Gimp-developer] GIMP branched: new stable branch gimp-2-10

[Jehan Pagès <jehan marmottard gmail com>]

Hi!

On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 1:33 PM, Simon Budig <simon budig de> wrote:

> Elle Stone (ellestone ninedegreesbelow com) wrote:
> > On 05/21/2018 11:13 AM, Jehan Pagès wrote:
> > > Just to be clear, the toolkit update here is not*just*  a necessary
> evil.
> > > It will also be totally awesome, even feature-wise!
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > > Simply to get there, we have to pass through an "unstable" phase,
> that's
> > > all there is to it.
> >
> > Apparently GTK+3.22 is considered "long term stable" (that is, supported
> for
> > three years? starting from when?) and is the last minor release in the
> GTK+3
> > series: https://blog.gtk.org/2016/09/01/versioning-and-long-term-
> stability-promise-in-gtk/
>
> Just to clarify, the "unstable" phase happens because we're migrating
> the toolkit, not because the toolkit we're migrating to is unstable...
>
> > Will the port from GTK+3 to GTK+4 be as difficult as the port from GTK+2
> to
> > GTK+3? Looking at various NEWS postings in the 3.93/.92/etc releases
> leading
> > up to GTK+4 (http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/gnome/sources/gtk+/), it looks
> like a
> > fair amount of stuff will change.
>
> I guess we'll see.


There is another issue which was raised these days by GTK+ developers who
discussed GIMP port: apparently GTK+3.99 (to become GTK+4) has currently no
macOS backend! Basically that means we'd lose GIMP on macOS. And worse,
they have (nearly or none at all?) no developers working on this, so it's
not even sure when or if it will come.

Actually even GTK+3 macOS port is bad but at least there is something. The
Windows backend on GTK+3 is bad too (still according to GTK+ devs) but is
more tested than Windows backend.

So yeah thinking about porting to GTK+4 is far too early. And anyway we
have already far enough to do. Deciding to port to a moving target (i.e.
unstable API) would be just masochistic.



> The major concern I have is related to our own ABI
> compatibility. Is there a way to decouple our ABI version from the GTK
> version? This is what forced us to stick with gtk2 for that long
> timeframe, and that sucked...
I think that is definitely a good point, and I am in favor of creating as
much high level "semantic" API as possible (when it makes sense). This
would create some boiler plate intermediate code, but is definitely worth
it on the long run IMO.

Jehan



> Bye,
>         Simon
>
> --
>               simon budig de              http://simon.budig.de/
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