gtk3 possible in next SZ update?

[ekianjo]

It's not that I really like gtk3 or something but many high profile open source apps are moving the gtk3 and we cannot update them anymore until the firmware has it (compiling gtk3 separately is not really feasible).

ANy idea if this will occur??

 

[Binky]

Qt4 would be nice, too.

 

[ekianjo]

qt4 would be difficult since it's super heavy in size. I don't think it it would ever fit in the NAND. But it's not a problem, it can be compiled and used separately. Gtk3 is a critical issue.

 

[slaeshjag]

I wouldn't expect it until .next is released

 

[ekianjo]

and when is .next due?

 

[slaeshjag]

Whenever someone decides to work on it. To my knowledge, noone is.

 

[ekianjo]

Whenever someone decides to work on it. To my knowledge, noone is.

Mmmm, that's kind of disappointing since it restricts what can be compiled for the Pandora a lot in the end.　

 

[_jr_]

Since I don't have a clue: what's the problem with compiling it seperately? Size? Dependencies? Hardcoded pathnames? Conflicts with other libs?

 

[ekianjo]

Since I don't have a clue: what's the problem with compiling it seperately? Size? Dependencies? Hardcoded pathnames? Conflicts with other libs?

gtk3 is big, is a full desktop environment and needs recompilation of major libraries (which takes a huge amount of time), for one, and second, it does not interact well with a gtk2 environment. So, they apparently cannot cohabit together well... That's a problem as many applications we have on Pandora have moved to gtk3 and we cannot update them anymore.

 

[levi]

It all depends what xfce uses, doesn't it?  As far as I can tell (after a quick search), it's still up in the air whether the next version of xfce (4.10) will use GTK3 or continue to use GTK2.

 

[ekianjo]

It all depends what xfce uses, doesn't it?  As far as I can tell (after a quick search), it's still up in the air whether the next version of xfce (4.10) will use GTK3 or continue to use GTK2.

nope, not necessarily. Once could decide to switch desktop environment if needed. Most applications would remain compatible anyway. KDE can run GNOME apps and vice versa.

 

[levi]

Yes, but only by having the appropriate gtk libraries installed, as I understand things. Given it's not possible for gtk2 and gtk3 to coexist, we'd need an environment which could run on those gtk3 libraries - which may be a future xfce, but at present I think is just Gnome.

Clearly, gtk3 is the future, but until xfce makes the jump (or lxde, or something else we could use does) I don't think we need to plan it in to .next.

Out of interest, what are these apps we use everyday that can't be built against gtk2?  I'm still using gtk2 on all of my other computers, and I've not noticed any apps I want to use being incompatible.

 

[ekianjo]

gtk3 is not the future, it's the present for most applications

gtk2 has not been updated from 2009 and is seriously lacking in some areas comparing to modern systems like Qt. 

MyPaint is one of these apps that cannot be updated anymore. But there are many others, I just cannot remember them right now but as you can imagine all developers of GNOME apps have moved to gtk3 already a year or a couple of years ago. 

It's not that the apps become incompatible (actually, they do in a way) but basically you are stuck with older program versions still made for gtk2. Not very positive when one is promoting a "linux experience" a Pandora. 

 

[levi]

All developers of GNOME apps may have moved, but there are very few GNOME-specific apps.  Most GUI apps I use are GTK apps which run on any desktop environment with gtk2 libs installed, such as XFCE, LXDE, Mint's MATE.  I guess you're right about MyPaint dropping any gtk2 build, just I've never personally come across any apps that have stopped receiving updates on gtk2.  It just seems a bit daft to me to drop gtk2 builds when there are so few desktop environments that run atop gtk3 today, but I guess the developers of MyPaint had their reasons (though I guess the main one I'm ignoring is that as far as I can tell, Ubuntu uses a forked version of gtk3 for its Unity inteface - just I gave up on Ubuntu years ago)

 

[ekianjo]

All developers of GNOME apps may have moved, but there are very few GNOME-specific apps.  Most GUI apps I use are GTK apps which run on any desktop environment with gtk2 libs installed, such as XFCE, LXDE, Mint's MATE.  I guess you're right about MyPaint dropping any gtk2 build, just I've never personally come across any apps that have stopped receiving updates on gtk2.  It just seems a bit daft to me to drop gtk2 builds when there are so few desktop environments that run atop gtk3 today, but I guess the developers of MyPaint had their reasons (though I guess the main one I'm ignoring is that as far as I can tell, Ubuntu uses a forked version of gtk3 for its Unity inteface - just I gave up on Ubuntu years ago)

Many apps require gtk3 nowadays. For example, Gnumeric requires gtk3. You can't compile it with gtk2 anymore, and there are many more like that. 

When there is no gtk2 support anymore you cannot update the app for Pandora anymore, it's as simple as that. 

And to correct what you are saying, few desktop environment run GNOME3 (and NOT gtk3) but all major distributions have moved to gtk3 a while ago already. Ubuntu, SUSE, etc... 

 

[ekianjo]

Here's what a xfce dev said on the forums about the future xfce 4.12 / http://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=6685

Gtk3 is not better or worse then gtk2 is atm. The api cleanup is a good thing for developers, but users won't notice this.

For Xfce 4.12 the plan is to switch to gtk3, if it is bad enough, we'll abort this and continue with gtk2. I personally doubt that. Gtk2 is a dead end in a couple of years and most often it is wise to step on the train early, to help resolving problems or point at performance issues.

 

As you see, "gtk2 is dead end". It's not only me who says that

 

Now they may not be ready for xfce 4.12 since it has been delayed (was supposed to be released in March) but they WILL move to gtk3 sooner or later.

 

[levi]

I agree that gtk2 is going nowhere fast, and we (as the GTK-users community) should be looking to move towards an actively maintained codebase.  Gnumeric is a good example of why we need to.  I just don't see a suitable desktop environment we could use today in .next that runs on gtk3 - although by the time .next comes out things may well have changed.

And to correct what you are saying, few desktop environment run GNOME3 (and NOT gtk3) but all major distributions have moved to gtk3 a while ago already. Ubuntu, SUSE, etc...

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but it's probably just a matter of terminology.  As I understood it, GNOME3 is a desktop environment which runs atop gtk3.  Distros like SUSE come with multiple desktop environments, so as the tech stands, probably come with either gtk2 or gtk3 depending on which desktop environment you choose to install.  Distros like Ubuntu on the other hand make completely separate (though dependent) distros called spins to let you select your preferred desktop environment, and I'd certainly assume Xubuntu remains using gtk2 for the time being.

 

[ekianjo]

I agree that gtk2 is going nowhere fast, and we (as the GTK-users community) should be looking to move towards an actively maintained codebase.  Gnumeric is a good example of why we need to.  I just don't see a suitable desktop environment we could use today in .next that runs on gtk3 - although by the time .next comes out things may well have changed.

And to correct what you are saying, few desktop environment run GNOME3 (and NOT gtk3) but all major distributions have moved to gtk3 a while ago already. Ubuntu, SUSE, etc...

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but it's probably just a matter of terminology.  As I understood it, GNOME3 is a desktop environment which runs atop gtk3.  Distros like SUSE come with multiple desktop environments, so as the tech stands, probably come with either gtk2 or gtk3 depending on which desktop environment you choose to install.  Distros like Ubuntu on the other hand make completely separate (though dependent) distros called spins to let you select your preferred desktop environment, and I'd certainly assume Xubuntu remains using gtk2 for the time being.

GNOME3 and gtk3 are very different things. GNOME3 is a desktop shell built on top of gtk3, but you can do anything with gtk3 that can already do with gtk2 : such as simple windows and so on. It does not mean that gtk3 applications are made ONLY for GNOME Shell, they can actually run on many other distros as long as they have the gtk3 library included (and they do, even in Ubuntu, no matter if it runs Unity as desktop environment!).　Just like you can run gtk2 application on a KDE-based distro (I am running OpenSUSE KDE right now and I can launch gtk2 applications without issue).

 

[levi]

GNOME3, GNOME shell and gtk3 are all different things (all, AIUI .  GNOME shell is part of GNOME3, and GNOME shell (like all the apps that are distributed as part of GNOME3) run on gtk3.  I understood that they broke compatibility between gtk3 and gtk2, so while you can create a window using gtk3, you can't take an app coded for gtk2 and recompile it against gtk3 and expect it to work.

While you can have Qt and gtk2/3 installed at the same time so you can run KDE and GNOME/GTK apps on the same system, there are conflicts between gtk2 and gtk3 so you can't have them both installed at the same time.