Hi, On Wed, 12 Feb 2014 00:39:14 +0200 Alex Alexander wrote:
>Hello fellow developers,
>
>In the first meeting of the new QA team, we discussed the state of the
>gtk{,2,3} USE flags in the main tree. [0]
>
>In its current state, USE="gtk" means gtk2. The Gnome team is trying
>to change this into "the most recent gtk version" (it is a work in
>progress).
>
>Unfortunately, the concurrent nature of gtk2/gtk3 has resulted in
>packages that may support either or both the toolkits. To handle this,
>a few developers have introduced the "gtk3" useflag, that prefers gtk3
>over gtk2 when both toolkit versions are supported. At this point, the
>Gnome team highly recommends prefering gtk3 if possible, skipping the
>useflag altogether. [1]
>
>Some developers choose to follow the Gnome team's highlights, while
>others choose to go their own way. The QA team would like to establish
>a guideline that solves this problem in the best way possible.
>
>During our discussion, it was pointed out that keeping a generic
>USE="gtk" is sub-optimal. The non-straightforward nature of new
>toolkit versions makes transitioning from one to the other a slow,
>tedius process and we think that a non-versioned USE flag makes things
>even worse.
>
>A few of our members recommended a move away from the unversioned
>USE="gtk" to versioned-only USE flags. Qt managed to do this quite
>successfully when they transitioned from the unversioned
>USE="qt" (that actually meant qt3) to USE="qt4". The benefits can be
>seen now that qt5 is around the corner. USE="qt5" is straightforward,
>does not mess with qt4 packages and was introduced to the tree without
>messing with current packages too much - other than adding a new use
>flag where appropriate. There is also no need for USE="qt" anymore.
>
>To achieve this, version 3 of gtk should always be enabled by
>USE="gtk3". At some point in the future, when gtk2 consumers reach
>zero, we will retire "gtk" for good. Then, if some day gtk4 comes
>around, we will be able to introduce support for it in the tree by
>simply adding USE="gtk4", without having to re-structure half the tree.
>
>We are reaching out to the developer community to hear your thoughts
>and ideas on the matter. We would like to reach a decision that could
>possibly affect and direct the state of whole tree. This decision
>could then be turned into a policy, improving Gentoo's consistency
>across the tree.
>
>Cheers
>
>[0]
>https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Meeting_Summaries#Summary_of_Wednesday_January_29.2C_2014
>[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gnome_Team_Policies#gtk3
This is a really good idea and I am all in favor of it.
gtk+:3 still isn't adopted widely and there are still not many good
looking skins available for it. (sorry but I don't want to have all gtk+
apps I am using looking totally ugly again)
I doubt gtk+:2 will be deprecated that soon as some of our devs try
to imply.
--
Lars Wendler
Gentoo package maintainer
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