[gentoo-dev] Re: www-client/chromium gtk3 support

[Duncan]

hasufell posted on Thu, 10 Sep 2015 17:35:53 +0200 as excerpted:

>> Again, I'm saying that maintainers should be free to support multiple
>> versions if they wish to do so.  They should not be required to do so.
>> And yes, I do realize that this limits options for users, but they're
>> welcome to proxy-maintain packages that do support the versions they
>> wish to use.  If they want to fork upstream they're even welcome to do
>> that, but obviously that isn't going to happen often.
>>
>> I just don't think we should be in the business of saying "no" here.
>
> Again, your proposed use case is 1) imaginary 2) currently impossible to
> support, because there are lots of applications which either force gtk3
> in the ebuild or have only gtk3 supported upstream. It will be pretty
> much impossible to not have gtk3 installed or loaded into RAM, unless
> you don't use a DE in the first place and stick to terminals.

Pretty much impossible?  For a kde and gtk2-based software user?  Not so 
much.  I've only one package here using gtk3, a relatively recent 
addition to a set in my world-sets file, and it's a rather optional 
package (solaar, for managing my Logitech wireless devices), with a CLI-
only option, so I've been thinking about disabling gtk3 support just to 
avoid having to hassle the gtk3 and supporting software updates.

One thing I learned fairly quickly with gentoo is that unlike binary 
distros, over time there's a real cost to one-off or two-off 
dependencies, because they aren't just single-time builds, but are 
generally updated and must be repeatedly rebuilt over time.  For things 
you /might/ use, or do use occasionally, but only perhaps yearly or less 
often, it's often more efficient to merge on-demand, then unmerge again, 
until they happen to be needed again, than it is to keep them and 
dependencies current the whole time.  (Tho obviously, this applies more 
to ~arch users who do --deep updates, than others.)

In that context, given the current usage of gtk3 in-tree, it's quite 
realistic for a user to wish to avoid gtk3, if they've a number of gtk2-
only apps (as I do).  Similarly the other way of course, for those with a 
number of gtk3 apps, they may wish to avoid gtk2 and gtk2-only apps, if 
they can, to avoid it being on their system, tho AFAIK with both chromium 
and firefox being gtk2 at this point, that's a bit more difficult.

Unfortunately, gentoo/gtk's attitude makes this much more difficult than 
it should be.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman