Re: [gentoo-dev] GTK:2 EOL and incoming migration to GTK:3

[Alec Warner]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2021 at 6:59 AM Peter Stuge <peter@×××××.se> wrote:
>
> Hanno Böck wrote:
> > > "It does mean, however, that GTK 2 has reached the end of its life.
> > > We will do one final 2.x release in the coming days, and we encourage
> > > everybody to port their GTK 2 applications to GTK 3 or 4."
> >
> > I read that as there will be one more gtk2 release and none after that.
> >
> > This seems to imply:
> > * When there's a security flaw in gtk2 there won't be a fix from
> >   upstream.
> > * When there's an incompatibility with new infrastructure (e.g. new gcc
> >   version / new glibc / changing API of libraries gtk depends on) there
> >   will be no updates from upstream.
> >
> > This means in all those instances maintainers will have to get patches
> > from somewhere. We'll likely end up with some form of
> > gtk-2.x-r[largenumber] with a large patchset at some point.
> > Maintaining that will be an increasing burden.
> >
> > No urgency, but a sign to slowly move off gtk2.
>
> Until there's a relevant flaw that will remain unfixed or there is
> significant incompatibility with infrastructure (recurse my argument)
> no signs actually exist.

So I think as the next post in the thread hints at:

 - I expect gtk2 (the library) to be around for a while. As written it
gets at least one more release.
 - I expect Gentoo to come after gtk2-only leaf packages pretty hard;
either to get upstream to port, or to remove them.
   - This is true even if the packages are fully functional with gtk2,
or don't have other bugs.
   - This is because we will eventually remove gtk2 from the tree
(which will make these packages unbuildable, and cause their removal.)

I'm less clear why we would keep libgtk2 in the tree for years and
years (just to keep nominally unmaintained gtk2 leaf packages
buildable?)

>
> Assuming that there will be a significant maintenance burden which
> affects all uses doesn't seem rational - hence my question.

I think you need to keep gtk2 (the library) for a fair bit (just like
we kept python2.7; the interpreter; for a fair while after its EOL.)

>
> The blog post shouldn't be misunderstood. The intended audience seems
> to be application developers, encouraging them to port applications,
> not so much distributions.
>
> Distributions quite often overlook that they wield much power, and
> thus also have much responsibility.
>
> Of course, GTK maintainers in Gentoo choose what to work on, and have
> made many (only?) excellent choices.
>
> I'm merely pleading for rational choices based on actual problems.
>
>
> //Peter
>