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

[Tristan Van Berkom <tvb gnome org>]

On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 11:17 PM, Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com> wrote:
> hi;
>
> On 17 May 2013 12:37, David Nečas <yeti physics muni cz> wrote:
> > On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 11:40:10AM +0100, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> > > it's maintained only for critical bugs, or for platform support; no
> > > new feature, and no new API is *ever* going in to the gtk-2-24 branch.
> >
> > And that's what many 3rd party developers like.  Absolutely no changes
> > except critical bug and platform support fixes.
>
> yes, I suppose there is a part of ISVs that favour this approach.
>
> after all, there are still a ton of corporate Motif applications
> written in 1994 lying around that still need to be replaced by web
> apps.
>
> >  All the small bugs and
> > peculiarities are known, are not replaced with a different set of small
> > bugs and peculiarities in the next release and we've learned how to work
> > around them.
>
> sure, let's work around bugs and "peculiarities" instead of, you know,
> fixing them. ;-)

Right, but let's try to fix them without radically changing the set of
particularities and introducing new bugs in the process ;-)

Basically, we must care about not breaking applications which were
written 3 or 4 years ago, those applications are just as important as
applications which were written, or hacked on, in the current release
cycle. The more we care about code which others have written in
the past, and not breaking their code by our "fixing of bugs" the more
we build trust.

Anyway, I'm sure this trust is getting stronger the more that
applications do port to GTK+3 and the more GTK+3 matures.

I.e. it's hard to fix back-compat problems when nobody files bugs
about them, the more applications which do port, the more bugs get
filed, and the more awareness is raised in general. It's that awareness
which helps us to pay attention to older applications, helps us to
avoid breaking older applications (which are just as important as
newer applications).

Cheers,
    -Tristan