Re: Status of GTK+ on Mac OS X?

[John Pye <john curioussymbols com>]

Hi Marius

Marius Schamschula wrote:
> John,
>
> On the Mac most installs use either MacPorts <www.macports.org
> <http://www.macports.org>> or Fink <fink.sf.net> to do the heavy lifting.

I have tried the Fink version of GTK but it's not available as a binary
(for some reason the distribution of binary packages from Fink is a
complete shemozzle), and furthermore, it's only GTK-X11, not GTK-OSX
(aka gtk-quartz, native GTK for OS X).

I haven't tried MacPorts yet. I was hoping to use Fink because I like
the fact that it's built on top of Debian packaging, a system that I
already understand. I believe there is some way to build a native OSX
'variant' of GTK using MacPorts.

A problem arises with distribution of GTK applications. Should a
developer include their own linked libraries for GTK when packaging, or
should they rely on a package dependency system like Fink instead?

>
> I think your question should be: Do Mac users need access to GTK+?
>
> The answer is absolutely.

The problem with expecting "user pull" is that Mac users perhaps aren't
aware of GTK+, or else might mistrust anything that's not totally made
in the "Mac Way".  So I think it's up to the GNOME foundation or else
GTK+ developers to provide a bit of "push" to these users.

I think that developers should be demanding a stable and complete native
implementation of GTK+ for Mac, so that they can expand their user base.
In my project, a GTK+ project, most of our users are actually Windows
users. We benefit hugely from those users, because they use and test our
software and give feedback, and grow our user community. So porting is a
valuable exercise for a GTK+ project.

But I also wonder if this is something that the GNOME foundation would
consider devoting some (limited) resources to? Donation money, perhaps?

FWIW I note that Qt, Wx, Fox and FLTK all include support for Mac, and
are possibly better initial choices for cross-platform development at
this stage.

Cheers
JP