Re: Gtk+ Version compatibilty?

["David Necas (Yeti)" <yeti physics muni cz>]

On Sun, Dec 18, 2005 at 03:35:30PM +0200, Daniel Pekelharing wrote:
> I've been working on an Autoconf system for my app,
> When it comes to detecting Gtk+, I don't know how early a version I
> should allow for?
>
> On my FC4 system I have Gtk+-2.6.7, should I setup the configure script
> to pass only on this or a later version?
> Or is there somewhere I can find a backward version compatibility list?

Unless you depend on a particular bugfix, you should require
2.y.0 as the minimum version (e.g., 2.6.0), as microversions
are quite compatible.

Each class, method, or other symbol has a note in API docs
which version of Gtk+ it appeared in (or it should have such
a note).  Of course, if you wrote the app without caring
about compatibility with older verions, checking the status
of each used symbol now is not very practical.

I'd recommend to simply compile and *test* the app
successively with Gtk+ 2.4, 2.2, 2.0 till it stops to
build/work.  Although all 2.x versions are essentially
backward compatible, there were various subtle behavioural
changes that may prove critical just for your app and
something can behave oddly even if it builds.  No
compatibility list will tell you that.

If you do not care so much, requiring 2.6.0 should be a safe
bet.

Yeti


--
That's enough.