GTK 4.0 Isn't Expected To Be Released Until Autumn 2020

GTK 4.0 won't be out this year, nor is it expected next spring as part of the GNOME 3.36 cycle, but now the developers believe this next major tool-kit update will be ready to ship in just over one year's time with the autumn release of GNOME 3.38.

Taking place the past few days was GNOME's annual GUADEC conference where understandably were a lot of discussions around GTK4. Among the GTK4 outcomes from GUADEC 2019 were:

- Introducing extra meta-data to theme index files for indicating "dark mode" themes, among other dark mode improvements.

- Adding a scalable list view widget to GTK4 that recycles row widgets.

- The infrastructure and APIs around animations in GTK4, similar to how animations behave in CSS.

- Completion of the menu/popover rework is expected for GTK 4.0.

- Making use of event controllers for shortcuts to replace mnemonics / accelerators / key bindings.

- Completing the new drag-and-drop API.

- Some non-blocker features discussed are a widget repository, a UI designer widget, and better support for split headerbars and state transitions.

- The Vulkan renderer for GTK4 still needs some attention/fixes.

While there aren't many features left to be tackled and some of the above-mentioned items already have some code fleshed out, it will take a while to complete the remaining code.

To get to the GTK 4.0 release, they are planning for another GTK4 development release before year's end, hitting the GTK 3.99 feature-complete state around GNOME 3.36 in the spring, and to hopefully ship GTK 4.0 around the GNOME 3.38 release in the fall of next year.

More details on the GTK.org blog.