Re: gnome-keyring gcr gtk2 patchset

[Stef Walter <stefw gnome org>]

On 07/19/2012 06:40 AM, mod oss hush ai wrote:
> I work on the Midori GTK-based web browser
> (<http://twotoasts.de/index.php/midori/>) and we recently encountered
> gcr as a potential solution to the lack of effective UI for managing
> SSL certificates for https connections. We've added gcr support to
> the browser and it works great, so I'd like to thank you for the
> excellent library.

Thanks. It's still a work in progress, but I'm glad it's already useful.

> However, Midori's aim is to be lightweight and portable, and run on
> not just the latest systems. So we have GTK2 support throughout the
> browser; the obvious conflict is that gcr depends on GTK3. I patched
> gcr to use GTK2 (and still work fine with GTK3, of course) and
> figured you would be interested in the patchset, which is attached.
> Passing --with-gtk=2.0 or --with-gtk=3.0 (3.0 being the default, so
> as to not disturb normal behavior) to configure makes gcr depend on
> GTK2 or 3. All the changes to C code are in #if GTK_CHECK_VERSION
> conditionals and the only significant change to packaging would be
> the additional generation of a libgcr-3-gtk2.so library and
> gcr-3-gtk2.pc package-config file, as seen in the changes to
> gcr/Makefile.am in the patchset.
>
> Hopefully you'll consider this within the scope of the gcr project,
> as it would be nice to have such a useful library for other GTK2
> programs and it would be helpful to avoid having to maintain and ship
> a separate fork of the GTK bits of gcr for just the Midori project.

We used to have GTK+ 2 support in GCR, and removed it due to lack of
manpower to maintain the complexity that it brought:

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-keyring-list/2011-March/msg00001.html

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-keyring-list/2011-May/msg00005.html

This was announced this several times on the mailing lists at the time,
and we received no objects to removing the GTK+ 2 support.

I'm unlikely to maintain a GTK+ 2 version of the Gcr library. If you
would like to use an old version that supported GTK+ 2 you are welcome
to do that. This is similar to how you use an old version of GTK+.

I think an appropriate version of the Gcr library can be found in the
gnome-keyring gnome-3-0 branch. This was before gcr was split out into
its own repository, and while it still supported GTK+ 2.x. In addition
these versions of Gcr when built with GTK+ 2.x were parallel installable
with Gcr when built with GTK+ 3.x. The attached patch produces lots of
files that conflict between the two.

Anyway here's that branch as a starting point:

http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-keyring/tree/?h=gnome-3-0

Seems like it would be necessary to put in a few commits to get the old
Gcr working on its own, but I wouldn't be against someone taking that
over. We could make a new branch, and then you could go wild :)

There are probably a few patches from the latest gcr that you would want
to cherry-pick back onto that branch.

However, the resources of the few people who contribute to the
crypto/security stuff in GNOME is insanely stretched as it is, and I it
would be imprudent to include your patch in Gcr's master branch for that
reason.

I hope that makes sense,

Stef