Clutter Is Being Officially Retired

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Clutter Is Being Officially Retired

The Clutter toolkit -- as the OpenGL-based graphics library for rendering UIs that dates back more than one decade to OpenedHand that was then acquired by Intel and notably used during the Moblin/MeeGo era -- is finally being officially retired...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Clutter-Being-Retired

[oleid]

Hm, so when will gnome-shell switch to gtk4 and remove their clutter?

[gQuigs]

clearing out the clutter...

[mirmirmir]

Hm, so when will gnome-shell switch to gtk4 and remove their clutter?

Gnome-shell barely uses gtk

[oleid]

Well, that's the point, isn't it?

[Alexmitter]

Hm, so when will gnome-shell switch to gtk4 and remove their clutter?

Gnome Shell since a long time has a internal fork of Clutter specially adapted for shell needs. This is more about the clutter previously used by apps like Totem, Boxes, 2048, etc. for those, GTK4 is a full replacement with all features they need available.

Their goal is to at some point replace Clutter in the shell with GTK4 or rather GTK5 as that seems to be the point they really want to have all clutter features in it.

[pal666]

Well, that's the point, isn't it?

no, your point is something else. gnome-shell will not switch to gtk4 because gtk is client library, while gnome-shell is server

[MrCooper]

Gnome Shell since a long time has a internal fork of Clutter specially adapted for shell needs.

To be pedantic, it’s mutter (the actual compositor) which has a copy of clutter (according to Mutter (software), the name mutter comes from Metacity & Clutter), not gnome-shell (which is basically just UI chrome on top of mutter).

[MrCooper]

no, your point is something else. gnome-shell will not switch to gtk4 because gtk is client library, while gnome-shell is server

It's not that simple. Mutter does use GTK3 for drawing server side decorations of X11 windows, though there's been talk about trying to get rid of that.

[Amano]

I wonder if the gtk3 code might be replaced by libdecor. Jonas Adahl is now taking care of that library.