Re: Big GDK cleanup

[Tim Janik <timj gtk org>]

On 7 Sep 2001, Owen Taylor wrote:

> I'm about to commit a huge patch to clean up GDK. This will, 
> unfortunately, probably cause minor build breakage for Win32
> and linux-fb until someone fixes stuff, and fairly large
> (though mechanical to fix) conflicts when next merging
> head changes into the multihead patch.

[...]

> The total effect of this change on exports for libgdk-x11 is:
> 
> # total symbols 
> nm /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-1.3.so | wc 
>     544    1632   17742
> gdk$ nm .libs/libgdk-x11-1.3.so | wc
>     494    1482   16378
> 
> # exported variables
> nm /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-1.3.so | grep '\<\(D\|B\)\>' | wc
>      38     114    1062
> nm .libs/libgdk-x11-1.3.so | grep '\<\(D\|B\)\>' | wc
>       2       6      52

ok, in principle i apprechiate that change.
but since this involves a huge API change for apps that have to freak
around with x11 specific gdk internals (i doubt there's much out there
in that category for win32 or fb), we should probably port a few of those
to 1.3 before sanctionizing all changes you made. (what comes to my mind
imediately is desk-guide or gdk-using wms).

> Which I think represents a significant improvement in cleanly defining
> our interfaces and making sure that we can maintain binary compatibility
> in the future. (Removing the exported structures is even more important
> for this purpose.)

hum, what huge binary incompat changes are you pondering about for 2.0.x?
or did you mean "source compatibility" for 2.x?

> 
> Regards,
>                                         Owen
> 

---
ciaoTJ