Re: Can I install both GTK+2 and GTK+3?

[Chris Vine <chris cvine freeserve co uk>]

On Fri, 17 May 2013 03:50:57 +0100
Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com> wrote:
> hi;
>
> yes, you most definitely can have gtk 2.x and gtk 3.x installed on the
> same machine, without them interfering with each other. the shared
> libraries and ancillary files are all parallel installable.
>
> what you cannot do is using gtk 2.x *and* gtk 3.x at the same time, in
> the same process.
>
> if you want to write your application to support both gtk 2.x and 3.x,
> you can do that only by compiling once against gtk 2.x and again
> against gtk 3.x — i.e. you will need two binaries.
>
> targeting gtk 2.x is not a good idea, though, unless you're migrating
> from 2.x to 3.x and you want to have a "grace period" for your users
> to switch. gtk 3.x is already 2.5 years old, and will be 3 years old
> when 3.10 is released this September.

I wouldn't agree with that.  gtk+-2 is still maintained (the latest
maintenance release is 4 days old) and is a far more stable target.

The introspection bindings for gtk+-3 break at regular intervals (I
gave up on trying write minor tools using gjs/introspection about 2
years ago because of it), and the theming breaks with every release.
Theming is not necessarily an issue for many programs, but
introspection is.

Possibly things might be settling down with gtk+3 now but I have not
seen any announcement that these are considered stable now.  Until there
is more stability I doubt there is any prospect of the big non-gnome
gtk+ applications I use (claws-mail, firefox and libreoffice) moving to
gtk+-3.

Chris