More Planning Details For GTK4 & Beyond

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  • justmy2cents
    Senior Member
    • Oct 2013
    • 1067

    #21
    Originally posted by Griffin View Post
    Great news. The new LTS versions are common request from independent developers and a perfect match for enterprise software like SLE and RHEL.

    Fedora releasing all even numbered GTK versions will not change. That is what matters to those who want the latest and greatest. Fedora's best in class QA have already proven it can deliver high quality release twice a year.

    Old fart developers who wont track the newer GTK versions should target Stable GTK3 and simply just flatpak it. Stable GTK3 will soon be the new GTK2.
    this will most probably change in Fedora as well since which version of Gtk some app uses is decision of that app. in most cases all distros should have installed all stable versions and then the last development version. this could work really well unless some developer would take a choice of using unstable and then dropping the ball. even in this last case all that app needs is for someone to update it to last stable and problem is solved even if it then never gets updated and more importantly, it was not toolkit that is at fault... it is incompetence of developer who didn't know what something entails

    also, it is not just the case of old fart developers. sometimes you get same restriction from deployment needs. if you need something that will run 24/7 you surely can't base it on unstable toolkit
    Last edited by justmy2cents; 15 June 2016, 08:44 AM.

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    • mether
      Fedora Contributor
      • Oct 2009
      • 2517

      #22
      Originally posted by bug77 View Post

      Oh, good. So theming can continue being the mess that it currently is. I'm glad we got that out of the way.
      Err, this is explicitly not the case. The latest version of GTK 3 has declared the theming API to be stable when it was declared to be unstable before.

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      • bug77
        Senior Member
        • Dec 2009
        • 6526

        #23
        Originally posted by RahulSundaram View Post

        Err, this is explicitly not the case. The latest version of GTK 3 has declared the theming API to be stable when it was declared to be unstable before.
        Yes, but the announcement doesn't say this will be true in the future. They only say they'll stabilize the API. There's no reference to theming (which, as I understand, is not part of the core API).

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        • mether
          Fedora Contributor
          • Oct 2009
          • 2517

          #24
          Originally posted by bug77 View Post

          Yes, but the announcement doesn't say this will be true in the future. They only say they'll stabilize the API. There's no reference to theming (which, as I understand, is not part of the core API).
          The announcement does not really impact the theming API any more than any other API. Whatever API has been declared to be stable is maintained for that series.

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          • zxy_thf
            Senior Member
            • Mar 2012
            • 621

            #25
            This makes sense to me, but please use some meaningful letters instead of the weird xxx.6

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            • Stoatally
              Junior Member
              • Apr 2016
              • 26

              #26
              I left this comment on the blog (it's in moderation):

              As a software developer I believe that if we want to be considered a profession, we have to actually be professional in what we do. A small part of this is versioning our software in an intuitive way and not being afraid to make our lives and the lives of the people who interact with our software (developers, packagers, people reporting bugs and end users) better “just for the sake of it”.

              You, I and many others here understand this versioning scheme as it at least has its roots in how other GNOME software is versioned. However it is more complicated and as a result worse than semantic versioning which has clear guidelines on this exact situation.

              Please do not make us live with more esoteric versioning.
              Maybe I come off as an arse, but really, that versioning scheme is awful.

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              • bug77
                Senior Member
                • Dec 2009
                • 6526

                #27
                Originally posted by Stoatally View Post
                I left this comment on the blog (it's in moderation):



                Maybe I come off as an arse, but really, that versioning scheme is awful.
                Ha, developers that understand software is not about them, but the end user... Good luck finding those.

                Comment

                • dkasak
                  Senior Member
                  • Sep 2007
                  • 498

                  #28
                  Originally posted by bug77 View Post

                  Oh, good. So theming can continue being the mess that it currently is. I'm glad we got that out of the way.
                  What themes have you built and what changes did you get burned by? Just curious ...

                  I'm also still waiting to hear about *API* breakages that people have encountered.

                  Comment

                  • bug77
                    Senior Member
                    • Dec 2009
                    • 6526

                    #29
                    Originally posted by dkasak View Post

                    What themes have you built and what changes did you get burned by? Just curious ...

                    I'm also still waiting to hear about *API* breakages that people have encountered.
                    I'm a KDE guy. The only thing that bites me it breakages in breeze-gtk. The KDE guys work hard to keep that up to date (the Gnome guys don't do that for Qt), but occasionally some changes slip by.

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                    • BwackNinja
                      Senior Member
                      • Jul 2012
                      • 144

                      #30
                      Originally posted by Stoatally View Post
                      I left this comment on the blog (it's in moderation):



                      Maybe I come off as an arse, but really, that versioning scheme is awful.
                      The versioning is intended for unstable api versions to be releasable and included in distributions because Gnome software will inevitably be depending on these changes. There isn't much point in making changes if you can only depend on them two years after they've been made. Everything about this is the best possible situation for Gnome, and the rest of the stakeholders get a GTK that they can rely on at the expense of trying to make incompatible changes with a 2-year cadence to avoid a proliferation of GTK versions installed.

                      Using new features available in the current unstable version is largely just asking for pain, so 3rd-party apps will always lag behind. If Gnome has its way, this won't just be a proliferation of GTK versions, but a proliferation of runtimes installed for sandboxed flatpak apps.

                      Gnome has interpreted "we want a stable api" as "give us a version you'll stop breaki --ahem-- fixing in ways that stop our code from working" rather than "let us use new features without having to deal with unrelated code breaking". I can understand the other side though. It's not fun being restricted from improving your code because people depend on things remaining exactly the same. The GTK2 to GTK3 move was great in that regard especially because of the struct hiding. Struct members were no longer part of the api, so things can change behind the scenes without applications breaking and needing to be recompiled.

                      It'd probably be rather interesting to see what api changes (rather than just additions) are planned that would make such a transition in development process make sense in the long term. I'd also wonder how hard porting applications would be for each major release.

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