Re: [gtkmm] Questions and information

[Chris Vine <chris cvine freeserve co uk>]

On Wednesday 18 June 2003 12:53 pm, Murray Cumming wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 12:16, Dean Kutryk wrote:
> > So what I'm wondering about is the future of Gtkmm.
>
> 1. GTK+ and GNOME will clearly be very successful and widespread in the
> future. Many companies need them. They have a bright future.
> 2. gtkmm has matured and demonstrated more understanding of API
> stability than most proprietary toolkits. Over the past few years we
> have had the following stable gtkmm releases: gtkmm 1.2, 2.0, 2.2. gtkmm
> 2.4 has already been started. We are state-of-the-art. Nobody else is
> even up-to-date with modern C++

The present (or, at least, recent) approach to API stability in gtkmm is not 
to break API (and indeed ABI) between extra-version numbers, but it does 
permit API breakage between minor as well as major number versions.  At any 
rate, your initial posting announcing gtkmm-2.3 indicated API breakage would 
be acceptable with respect to gtkmm-2.2.

This may have changed, but if not I doubt it shows "more understanding of API 
stability than most proprietary toolkits", in the sense in which those who 
write proprietary code which use them are likely to understand the 
expression.  gtkmm's policy no ABI breakage between extra version numbers has 
however seemed to me to be exemplary, and perhaps that is what you meant?

gtkmm is certainly state-of-the-art, which unfortunately tends to pull in the 
opposite direction from API stability.

Chris.