On 24-8-2014 9:02, Tavmjong Bah wrote:
On Sat, 2014-08-23 at 13:12 -0700, Jon A. Cruz wrote:
On Sat, Aug 23, 2014, at 01:30 AM, Alex Valavanis wrote:
@Jon, it wouldn't cut anyone off since all current Linux distros, devlibs & OSX are able to build the experimental Gtk+ 3 flavour.
Unfortunately it usually is nowhere near that simple in the real world. Although it is *possible*, we lose end-users when it is no longer simple and easy. If a distro has GTK3 libs in its repository then we're good. Otherwise...
The top Google search result is a page with instructions for using GTK3 on CentOS 6 which added this at the top of their page (in red):
"You don't want to do that unless you know Linux very well.Seriously. Just forget about GTK3 software."
Keep in mind that is coming from those who know and inform people on how to do the builds. We can get into the 'why's of it on another thread if people are interested, but this includes the fact that introducing non-package-owned software on a package managed distro is a source of all sorts of complications and errors.
So requiring GTK3 is clear on the Ubuntu front since 12.04LTS does include it in their repo. RHEL 5 and RHEL 6 do not, while the newly introduced RHEL 7 does. RHEL 5 can probably be safely regarded as "too old", but RHEL 6 is still in the middle of of its initial production phase which does not end until Q2 of 2016. Given that RHEL 7 is still at "dot 0", those using RHEL probably are not into a transition yet from 6 to 7.
This also is the state for many other distros that draw from RHEL including:
CentOS
Scientific Linux
Oracle Linux
And definitely keep in mind that at least a large portion of our targeted end users are not highly technical linux coders, but those with the need to create graphics, such as artists and designers.
True, but the long-term releases are generally not targeted to this group. LTR's are more used on servers where long-term stability is important. In my previous life as a physicist, we would have the latest release on our desktops/laptops while our analysis farms would be running a LTR.
Also, don't forget that 0.92 isn't going to happen tomorrow...
I agree. What I gather from mails to our list, I think availability of GTK3 is not a problem for 0.92 onwards. This is similar to moving to C++11. The explanation is simply that working on an LTR/LTS system is not marriable (in general) to using supernew/trunk Inkscape; it would conflict (imho) with the "LTS" part of that system.
-Johan