Preparing To Let Go Of GTK+ 2.x For GTK+ 3.0

As we have mentioned with the first of the early GNOME 3.0 development packages getting checked-in (such as the improved Totem Movie Player), the first GNOME 2.31 development milestone is this week in the road to GNOME 3.0 (a.k.a. v2.32) that will be reached this September. Joining this round of new GNOME development packages that are looking for testing is GTK+ 2.21.0, which is leading up to the 2.22 release of the de facto standard tool-kit for the GNOME desktop.

GTK+ 2.22 is expected to be the last stable GTK+ 2.x series release before all future development efforts are focused on GTK+ 3. GTK+ 2.22 will be released at the same time that GTK+ 3.0 makes its premiere this September with GNOME 3.0.

As described in the GTK+ 2.21.0 release announcement by Matthias Clasen of Red Hat, "[GTK+ 2.22] will not receive major feature work beyond API additions that are required to facilitate porting to GTK+ 3." GTK+ 2.22 will also maintain source and binary compatibility with the existing GTK+ 2.20 series builds, but as the GTK+ API isn't yet finalized, the 2.21.0 version may not end up maintaining compatibility with the official 2.22 release.

Some of the talked about features for GTK+ 3.0 include better CSS-based theming support, full off-screen rendering, resolution independence / free scaling of user-interfaces, a simple transparency API for widgets, physics features in the UI, full MPX / multi-touch support, easier widget creation, and many other features for popular this tool-kit. Serious development of GTK+ 3.0 has now been going on for more than one year.