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

[Peter Stuge]

John Helmert III wrote:
> > Until there's a relevant flaw that will remain unfixed or there is
> > significant incompatibility with infrastructure (recurse my argument)
> > no signs actually exist.
>
> Waiting until such a problem pops up and bites everyone before doing
> anything about it doesn't sound like a good way to handle it.

I guess that's a matter of opinion. But more importantly, "anything"
can mean a lot, and removing gtk2 is the ultimate sledgehammer.

Deciding to certainly use it at an unknown point in the future seems
unneccessary and premature to me.


> If an application never ports, do you expect the distribution to
> maintain that package ad infinitum?

As always it depends on the required effort.

When keeping the package requires little or no effort I *do* expect it
to not be removed solely because there will be no more releases, which
is really what was stated in the announcement, and why I piped up.


Alec Warner wrote:
>  - I expect gtk2 (the library) to be around for a while. As written it
> gets at least one more release.

Ack. My point isn't about immediate action, rather about what drives decisions.


>  - 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.)

That's indeed what I'm trying to give more perspective to.

If there's in fact no other reason to "come after packages hard" and
"remove gtk2" than "no more releases" then I'm strongly against doing so.


> 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?)

This assumes that "maintained" neccessarily means "will port from gtk2"
which I don't agree with at all.

There are many reasons to not port from gtk2 to something else. As long
as there are no concrete problems, especially if one knows the relevant
parts of gtk2 well and is convinced that they are free of issues, there
is in fact no reason *to* port from gtk2. Except if distributions create
one.

It's awfully unneccessary to do that without good reason.


> > 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.)

I'd argue that python2.7 should remain until demonstrably untenable,
ideally indefinitely.

At some point probably no longer within Gentoo's Python infrastructure -
but at a minimum as a trivial package.


//Peter