End of life for gtk+extra and GTK+2

[Ludovic Brenta-2]

Hello, world.

As you all know, development of GTK+ 3.0 is in progress with a target release
date around March 2010.  GTK+ 3.0 will remove some functions that are
presently deprecated in GTK+ 2.16.  GtkAda uses gtk+extra2 (in src/gtkextra),
which is dead upstream and uses these deprecated symbols heavily.

I would like to give you an advance warning that Debian plans to drop GTK+ 2
and gtk+extra at some point in the future after GTK+ 3.0 is introduced.  My
estimate is that this removal might happen in June 2010.  When gtk+extra and
GTK+ 2 are removed from Debian, it will no longer be possible to build GtkAda,
or to run GtkAda applications on Debian; this applies both to Debian's
packages and to the GPS in GNAT GPL Edition, since it is linked dynamically
against GTK+ 2.

It is time to walk, not run, to the exit.

I can think of several possible solutions:
- adopt maintainership of gtk+extra2 and port it to to GTK+ 3.  This is a
major
undertaking according to the current Debian maintainer of gtk+extra2.
- reimplement the GtkAda widgets that currently depend on gtk+extra2 with
equivalent widgets from GTK+ 3 and drop gtk+extra2.  This reimplementation
could be done in Ada, too :)
- Drop the GtkAda widgets that depend on gtk+extra2 altogether.  I do not
think
this is desirable, especially if paying customers rely on those widgets.

Note that neither of the first two solutions depend on GTK+ 3 being released.
It is possible to do the porting early (i.e. right now) by using GTK+ 2.16 and
making sure not
to use any of the deprecated symbols; GTK+ 2.16 provides C preprocessor
defines that detect and warn against uses of deprecated symbols.  GTK+ 2.16
guarantees upward compatibility with 3.0 provided no deprecated symbols are
used.

I do not know which of the three solutions is more realistic.  I suggest you
guys do an assessment and tell me what you decide.

For more information, please see the recent thread on debian-devel starting
at:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/06/msg00884.html

This issue is not specific to Debian. I anticipate that community
distributions
(Fedora, Gentoo, etc.) will drop GTK+ 2 first, followed by the other
"long-term support" distributions (Red Hat, SuSE, FreeBSD, etc).

--
Ludovic Brenta.
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[Nicolas Setton]

Hello Ludovic,

> As you all know, development of GTK+ 3.0 is in progress with a  
> target release
> date around March 2010.  GTK+ 3.0 will remove some functions that are
> presently deprecated in GTK+ 2.16.  GtkAda uses gtk+extra2 (in src/
> gtkextra),
> which is dead upstream and uses these deprecated symbols heavily.
>
> I would like to give you an advance warning that Debian plans to  
> drop GTK+ 2
> and gtk+extra at some point in the future after GTK+ 3.0 is  
> introduced.  My
> estimate is that this removal might happen in June 2010.  When gtk
> +extra and
> GTK+ 2 are removed from Debian, it will no longer be possible to  
> build GtkAda,
> or to run GtkAda applications on Debian; this applies both to Debian's
> packages and to the GPS in GNAT GPL Edition, since it is linked  
> dynamically
> against GTK+ 2.

Thanks for the heads-up, this is useful.

Do you have some visibility on the use of gtk+extra in the Debian  
community in general? Or is GtkAda the only package that needs/depends  
on gtk+extra?

Nico
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[Ludovic Brenta-2]

Nicolas Setton <setton@...> writes:
> Do you have some visibility on the use of gtk+extra in the Debian
> community in general? Or is GtkAda the only package that needs/depends
> on gtk+extra?

Only three packages currently depend on gtk+extra; one is GtkAda and the
other is being removed.  Neither has a lot of users, per the Popularity
Contest figures:

http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=libgtkada2.12+quicklist+gpsim&show_installed=on&want_legend=on&want_ticks=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1

quicklist: make quick lists of things in GNOME
gpsim: Simulator for Microchip's PIC microcontrollers

The maitainer of gtk+extra is planning to remove quicklist, which he
also maintains, from Debian.

--
Ludovic Brenta.


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[Nicolas Setton]

>> Do you have some visibility on the use of gtk+extra in the Debian
>> community in general? Or is GtkAda the only package that needs/
>> depends
>> on gtk+extra?
>
> Only three packages currently depend on gtk+extra; one is GtkAda and  
> the
> other is being removed.  Neither has a lot of users, per the  
> Popularity
> Contest figures:

Then how about simply compiling GtkAda without the bindings for gtk
+extra? The GtkExtra bindings are well isolated from the other  
bindings, it should be sufficiently easy to cut them out. Would this  
work for you?

Nico
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[Ludovic Brenta-2]

Nicolas Setton <setton@...> writes:

>>> Do you have some visibility on the use of gtk+extra in the Debian
>>> community in general? Or is GtkAda the only package that needs/
>>> depends
>>> on gtk+extra?
>>
>> Only three packages currently depend on gtk+extra; one is GtkAda and
>> the
>> other is being removed.  Neither has a lot of users, per the
>> Popularity
>> Contest figures:
>
> Then how about simply compiling GtkAda without the bindings for gtk
> +extra? The GtkExtra bindings are well isolated from the other
> bindings, it should be sufficiently easy to cut them out. Would this
> work for you?

Well, I was under the impression that some of the GtkAda widgets
relied on gtk+extra./  If this is incorrect, then of course the
easiest solution to the problem is simply to not provide the
bindings to gtk+extra anymore.

--
Ludovic Brenta.


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[Ludovic Brenta-2]

Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@...> writes:
> Well, I was under the impression that some of the GtkAda widgets
> relied on gtk+extra./  If this is incorrect, then of course the
> easiest solution to the problem is simply to not provide the
> bindings to gtk+extra anymore.

Also, does GPS need any of the gtk+extra widgets?

--
Ludovic Brenta.


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[Nicolas Setton]

>> Well, I was under the impression that some of the GtkAda widgets
>> relied on gtk+extra./  If this is incorrect, then of course the
>> easiest solution to the problem is simply to not provide the
>> bindings to gtk+extra anymore.
>
> Also, does GPS need any of the gtk+extra widgets?

No, GPS does not depend on gtk+extra.

If you would like to provide a patch to allow configuring gtk+extra  
off, we'd be happy to apply it :-)

Nicolas
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