Re: GTK+ 3, Win32 and GtkApplication (DBus woes)

[Kean Johnston <kean johnston gmail com>]

On 3/28/2011 1:12 PM, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 5:35 AM, Kean Johnston<kean johnston gmail com>  wrote:
> > Hello everyone,
>
> GtkApplication is a rather new piece of the GTK API. There has been
> quite a bit of discussion about its role and its impact on cross
> platform portability.
I'll try read more of the mailing list archive. I have a vested interest in 
Gtk+ 3 on Win32 and MacOS, so if ever any help is needed or wanted testing 
any changes, I am very happy to help.

> The answer for now is that if you want cross platform portability,
> simply don't use GtkApplication. It didn't exist several months ago,
> and there are plenty of excellent apps written with GTK that don't use
> it.
In one particular case, namely using the current "beta" of Glade, I was 
able to get it to at least start working by extracting a previous version 
of main.c from git. Fortunately, the change the author made to use 
GtkApplication was in a single commit so it was easy to unwind.

My only concern about "simply don't use it" is that it seems (to me at 
least) as if newcomers are encouraged that way, and it currently isn't 
portable, as you stated. Considering what a long history Gtk+ has of being 
very portable, from the outside looking in it's a bit concerning that it 
even made it into the mainline in its current state considering its 
portability impact. I guess because the primary use platform is Linux it is 
very easy to loose sight of the fact that it is used elsewhere, since the 
vast majority of users will remain ignorantly happy.

People are very obviously aware of this impact, I'm just adding my voice to 
the mix keeping portability a primary, rather than secondary concern.

Thank you for your prompt reply.

Kean