Re: GTK+ modularization

[Allin Cottrell <cottrell wfu edu>]

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006, Murray Cumming wrote:

> > This has been discussed a bit at Guadec; and I have started 
> > looking into what it would take to allow compiling GTK+ with 
> > certain subsets of widgets.
> >
> > My current patch defines a small number of optional subsets:
> >
> > * broken: widgets covered by GTK_ENABLE_BROKEN
> > * deprecated: widgets covered by GTK_DISABLE_DEPRECATED
>
> Does this also remove deprecated functions, signals, 
> properties, etc. That might give an extra few %.

IMHO, as a gtk app author, this is a very expensive few percent, 
and the whole idea is a bad one (caveat: if I understand it 
correctly, which is not guaranteed).

I will admit to using several pieces of DEPRECATED GTK 
functionality -- because that's the way I wrote my app in the 
first place, and I haven't seen a compelling reason to change 
it.  (Though I have updated to new GTK APIs where it seemed to 
me that there were real advantages to the user.)

I truly hate to think of the problems that could arise with 
people trying to compile or run (via rpm or deb packages) my app 
on systems where GTK does not support anything deprecated.

GTK is getting bigger, so I can sort-of see the point of this 
discussion, but it's not anywhere near the bloat factor of QT, 
and hard drives are getting bigger too.  I would put this idea 
on the shelf for another several years.

Allin Cottrell
Wake Forest University
author of gretl http://gretl.sourceforge.net/