Re: [gtkmm] Questions and information

[Chris Vine <chris cvine freeserve co uk>]

On Saturday 21 June 2003 7:48 pm, Andrew wrote:

[snip]

> Hi, I'm new to this list but this is my point of view....
>
> API:
> I tried to compile a glib/gtk 2.2 application on a machine powered by a
> gnome 2.0 release and it did not compile. Is it normal? If glib/gtk API is
> not stable among minor release, we do not have to expect glibmm/gtkmm to be
> frozen after a major release. It is enough for glibmm/gtkmm API stability
> not to be broken between extra-versionnumbers.
>
> Anyway, I'd like to be sure that applications written with gtk 2.4 will
> compile with gtk 2.2... and if C API won't be broken, C++ API must be kept
> completely backward compatible.
>
> ABI:
> It has surely to be frozen after a major release! A lot of people does not
> like to compile their applications... ABI stability is necessary for
> Windows commercial software to be ported on Gnome.

If you mean Gtk+ and Glib (the C libraries) then where possible they will 
maintain API and binary compatibility through the 2.* series, including Gtk+ 
2.4 and 2.6 (at least, their publicity material states that as one of the 
features of Gtk+ - see also http://www.gtk.org/plan/ which states that Gtk+ 
3.0 will be the earliest that a source and binary incompatible release will 
be made).

As it happens gtkmm-2.2 is API compatible with gtkmm-2.0 (at any rate, I have 
not had any problem compiling stuff which compiles on gtkmm-2.0 also on 
gtkmm-2.2), but as I last saw it announced gtkmm-2.4 will not be API 
compatible with gtkmm-2.0/2.2.  I do not imagine the breakage will be that 
severe, but I am just a user (!) so I do not really know.

If you want a guarantee of API compatibility through 2.*, unfortunately you 
will probably need to stick to plain Gtk+ and the C API (yuck).  There are a 
few other wrappers around, but except for wxWindows (which is more than just 
a wrapper) they do not seem particularly well maintained.

Chris