On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Johan Engelen <jbc.engelen@...2592...> wrote:
On 19-12-2011 1:57, Alex Valavanis wrote:
Hi All,
As we move towards GTK3 compatibility , we're going to run into a lot of backward-compatibility issues. For easy cases like bug #800565 [1], we can just add code alternatives, but there are other situations where this isn't really desirable. An example would be fixing deprecated symbols in our copy of GDL... I'd really prefer to import changes from upstream rather than increasing the size of our diff any further. However, the upstream fix for one of the GDL issues requires gtk+ 2.22.
The question is when to start bumping the gtk+ version requirement for Inkscape? If we want to support LTS linux distros, we could be waiting a **very** long time. For example... Ubuntu Lucid (LTS) has no GTK+3 library, and only gtk+ 2.20, and is supported until April 2013.
Options include...
- Keep our linux LTS-release support rigorously; don't make any gtk
code updates that introduce a gtk> 2.20 dependency (unless there are easy code-alternatives for backward compatibility). Eventually move on when common LTS distros reach end-of-life.
- Gradually inch forward with dependency versions. Drop linux
LTS-release support for trunk, but maintain support for all current non-LTS distro versions (e.g. Ubuntu Maverick and higher).
- Charge ahead mercilessly towards compatibility with the current
stable GTK version (currently 3.2). Break support for linux distributions as required, and laugh heartily in the faces of the grieving users.
Any thoughts?
For who doesn't know yet (I didn't until I bought a tablet): We already doing the "laugh heartily in the faces of the grieving users". Considering the 1+ million Windows downloaders of 0.48.2, it is quite likely to affect more people than just me.
The bug tracker and numerous forum posts confirm your guess.
Cheers, Josh