Re: Maintaining the GTK+ and GDK abi

[mortenw gnome org (Morten Welinder)]

I like the idea, but I really, really dislike the implementation of
the idea.

Currently, all gtk+ functions have been given an alias function in
gtkalias.h, gdkalias.h, etc.

Problems:

* Any change to any .h file in gtk+ will cause a recompile of all
  .c files.  That sort-of kills the idea of "make".

* Every .c files compiled must now parse an extra 11167-line .h
  file.  The pre-processor must do gazillions of macro expansions.

* Debug information for every single of these alias functions are
  now in the .so file taking up tons of space.  I'm sure there is
  some gdb issues lurking in there.

* Every gtk+ function now has two definitions making life harder
  when working with things like etags.

* We broke even C99's identifier length guarantee.  (Think 71 chars:
  gtk_color_selection_set_change_palette_with_screen_hook__internal_alias.)

* When adding a new function there is suddenly a lot of things that
  can go wrong.

I pointed this -- and a solution -- out in bug 145519, but that
was just closed.  I don't understand this opposition to doing
things right.

(And that is even ignoring the at least three bugs remaining in the
implementation of the alias scheme when the bug was closed.)

Morten