[Glade-users] why do you exclude 'stable'-guys from the pleasure of getting in touch with new features

[juanpablougarte at gmail.com (Juan Pablo Ugarte)]

On Thu, 2013-07-25 at 20:05 +0200, Johannes Deutsch wrote:
> Hi,
>
> i enjoy reading Tristan's and Juan's blog from time to time.

heh thanks! I am glad someone actually read that stuff :)

> Every time i do this i'm enthusiastic about the changes that are
> implemented in the development branch respectively the changes that are
> merged into the current stable branch.
>
> For example i celebrated the announcement of the autosave feature.  A
> deeply missed feature if you write your code with a simple editor and
> have to press Ctrl-S everytime you switch back from glade. Another
> feature that impressed me is the extended support for composite
> widgets.

Yeah composite widgets is going to be great!

> Unfortunately i have to wait for all these nice features for so long

Well we tried to stick to GNOME release schedule (every 6 months) but
unfortunately we could not make it on time last time! so yeah its being
a long time since the last stable release. But do not worry a new one is
coming soon! :)

> since i stick to debian stable. Although that means i'm used to compile

I been using debian since potato (8/9 years) and I can not remember when
I switched to Sid and never regret it, ironically it is pretty stable.

I recommend using stable for servers, for desktop you should go at least
with testing. anyways you can always have an unstable chroot.
debootstrap is great!

> newer versions of installed software by my own i don't want to
> corrupt my system in a way that i update packages with a lot of
> dependencies by hand. Of course i can install the whole gtk+/glib
> related stuff in a separate directory tree (/opt or /usr/local) but
> i will not going to the 'jhbuild'-hell everytime a new version of glade
> is on the market.
>
> So my main question is, why gtk+ independent features aren't merged
> into previous versions of glade.

In theory because stable release never get new functionality only bug
fixes, otherwise it would probably stop being stable.
In practice mostly because there is not enough man power to develop and
maintain Glade as we would like. Maybe we should start thinking in ways
to find funding and make glade a better experience.

> Another question is (less glade related), how do you guys keep your gtk+
> system up to date to enjoy those new features i'm talking about. I can't
> image that the target audience of new development are only those who
> develop on a testing or an experimental distribution. Or is it just my
> descision to stick with a stable release of my favorite distribution
> that is to conservative and not contemporary any longer!?

As I mention before, I use Sid so gtk is pretty up to date (3.8 landed a
couple of months ago) and I build gtk master manually when I need to.
Since usually the only dependency not up to date is glib.

hope this clarifies the situation a bit.
thanks for writing!

Juan Pablo