Re: [gtkmm] Questions and information

[Chris Vine <chris cvine freeserve co uk>]

On Wednesday 25 June 2003 7:52 am, Murray Cumming Comneon com wrote:

[snip]

> The API stability policy of gtkmm is directly inspired by that of GTK+ and
> GNOME. You are just arguing about when the API breaks should happen and
> what version numbers we should use. You do realise that there is going to
> be an API-breaking GTK+ 3 eventually, and an API-breaking set of GNOME 3
> libraries.

[snip]

This is the nub of the matter.

Maintaining a library requires striking a balance between not unnecessarily 
breaking API and so putting the burden on software writers of rewriting code 
on the one hand, and enabling those library improvements to take place which 
require an API-breaking change (most do not) on the other hand.  I do not 
think the balance with gtkmm is right; you think it is.  I agree there had to 
be breakage between 1.2 and 2.0, although I think it was much greater than it 
need have been.

Once both gtkmm 2.4 and Gtk+ 2.4 come out, a distributor wanting to support a 
wide range of code using gtkmm (assuming that a wide range is available) 
would soon need to ship:

(i) gtkmm-1.2,

(ii) gtkmm-2.0 or 2.2, depending on which of these, if any, works against Gtk+ 
2.4 - if neither do they are stuck because the distributor is not going to 
distribute Gtk+ 2.2 as well as Gtk+ 2.4, as in the unlikely event of him 
wanting to do so, I understand that Gtk+ 2.2 and Gtk+ 2,4 will not be 
parallel installable), and

(iii) gtkmm 2.4.

I doubt the distributor is going to want to do that.

The origin of all this was your comment in a posting that "gtkmm has matured 
and demonstrated more understanding of API stability than most proprietary 
toolkits".  I do not understand how you reach this conclusion.  Which 
proprietary toolkits do you think show greater API instability than gtkmm?

Chris.