Re: Gtk+4.0

[Sébastien Wilmet <swilmet gnome org>]

On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 04:19:30AM +0000, philip chimento gmail com wrote:
> 4. Maintainers of libraries that depend on GTK (such as GtkSourceView, VTE,
> WebKitGTK) are concerned about having to maintain essentially a separate
> library for each unstable release.

Actually, I do not fully understand this. Can you extend a bit?

For example, imagine that GTK+ 4.0 and GtkSourceView 4.0 are released.
During the 4.1 development cycle, GTK+ breaks the API in a way that
forces GtkSourceView to also break its API. For the 4.2 release, both
GTK+ and GtkSourceView bump their SONAME.

Then in GtkSourceView, some bugfixes can be backported to the 4.0
version and new micro versions can be released, 4.0.3 etc. Exactly as it
is done now. GtkSourceView 4.0 and 4.2 are not separate libraries, it's
the same as 3.18 and 3.20, except that there is an API break between 4.0
and 4.2.

Another practical difference is that this might need several jhbuild
installations (the 4.0 installed in a certain prefix, the 4.2 in another
prefix), and switching between different jhbuildrc. I already do this
sometimes, for older versions.

--
Sébastien