On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:29 AM Peter Weber <peter.we...@ttyhoney.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Jun 2016 17:07:46 +0100, Simon McVittie > <simon.mcvit...@collabora.co.uk> wrote: > > Ideally, we'd choose the trade-off such that projects that want to stick > > to a stable-branch version are happy with its stability, while also not > > feeling that they are missing out on too much new stuff by doing so. A > > year is probably too fast? 5 years is probably too slow? I don't know > > what the right middle ground between those two is, but 2 years sounds > > like a good first guess. > > I started to think about it this. I tend to compare Gtk with Qt, but they > are not the same. On the other hand, Gtk and Qt are only major > platform-independent toolkits and largely used on GNU/Linux. The active > phase of Gtk2 lasted from 2001 - 2011 and it is still maintained in 2016, > which is a scary long time. Qt's cycle is much shorter, they moved from > 2.x till 5.x in same time frame. > > The current proposal will split Gtk into stable branch, which will break > in an insupportable* short-period of two years. Even if some major > applications will move immediately to a stable release, they will already > use the out-dated within two years. Furthermore GNOME will not use "Gtk", > GNOME will use it's own Gtk which will likely look and feel different in > several ways(HIG?). I'm afraid support for at least the development Gtk, > the stable Gtk and the old-stable Gtk will be required also. > > * Thank you English language for this word! > > 10 Years are too long and 2 years are too short. Right? Is it better to > break the API/ABI clearly once and keep it stable for some years, maybe a > range between 4 to 6 years? In this area compatible (non-breaking) > features > can be added. I'm feeling far more comfortable with this idea. This sounds > similiar to Qt and maybe it's a good approach: > > + all applications will largely use the same toolkit (good for users) > + reliable planning (application developers) > + necessary API/ABI break (library developers) > + less maintenance burden (library developers) > - not so many freedom through API/ABI break (library developers) > > I would prefer a faster and more firm cycle. > I've tried to capture some of the discussion that we've had so far, on-list and off, in this FAQ [1]. I also added some points for further discussion, such as the longer cycle length you mentioned above. Regards, Philip C [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GTK%2B/Lifecycle/FAQ
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