Am 13.11.2013 11:22, schrieb Thomas Martitz:
Am 13.11.2013 01:21, schrieb Matthew Brush:
That's a fair[1] argument *if* those old distros aren't shipping GTK3
binaries/libraries (I can't say whether they are or not), otherwise
it's a bogus point because then we're only talking about a very very
small number of users who (all of these must apply, not just some):
- Use an old, nearly end-of-life enterprise distro
- Don't have admin rights or clout enough to get admins to install
newer versions of stuff
- Need to compile Geany from source, from the absolutely bleeding
edge head of Git, rather than using the version they're "supposed to"
as available from their distro and supported by their IT personnel
- Refuse to take a few hours to compile newer GTK+ stack in $HOME
- Can't or don't want to run a virtual machine, bootstick or live
distro to get access to more modern software
Cheers,
Matthew Brush
[1]: Well not completely fair, because they're making Geany
development harder and holding back progress/improvements for the
sake of having to use latest Geany releases instead of older, stable
and supported versions, and even then still need to be able compile
from source code and permissions to install development packages and
such which I imagine are unlikely to be pre-installed for them by
their sysadmins.
I'm *really really really* tired of this topic. This comes up every
now and then, with the same bulled points over and over and with no
outcome at all (we're still at 2.16 after a couple of discussions even
though nobody explicitly says we need to be at this specific version).
Can't we just define a simple rule that's written out somewhere as to
which GTK+ version to support. I don't mean a specific version number
but a rule like "The one released X years/month ago" or "the version
shipped in (enterprise) distro ABC" or "re-evaluated in a grand IRC
meeting every Y month". This would mean implicit bumping of the
minimum (by accepting patches that bump the minimum while observing
the rule) as required. Then we don't have to have this tiresome
argument over and over.
I'd like to add that this is an issue that really puts off existing and
potential contributors (see Matthew's document-messages work which is
awesome but stalled) because it's unclear whether it's worthwhile to
work on something that requires a newer gtk. It's unclear because we
have no process for evaluating and eventually bumping the minimum gtk
version and a contributor cannot know if or when the gtk version will be
bumped to meet the changes he has in mind.
The current process of "do the change and we'll see" followed by having
the same discussion over compatibility again without result is terrible
for everyone involved.
Best regards.
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