Re: [gentoo-user] Re: wxPython/wxWidgets release number mismatch

[Mart Raudsepp]

Ühel kenal päeval, E, 17.09.2018 kell 19:02, kirjutas Andrew Udvare:
> On 9/17/18 5:02 PM, Grant Edwards wrote:
> >
> > It wants to re-install wxpython-3.0.2.0, wxGTK-3.04 and
> > wxGTK-304-r300.  I've already done that a few times, but I answered
> > 'y' anyway and let it reinstall them again.  It didn't help:
> >
> > $ python -c "import wx"
> >
> > /usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/wx-3.0-gtk2/wx/_core.py:16629:
> > UserWarning: wxPython/wxWidgets release number mismatch
> >   warnings.warn("wxPython/wxWidgets release number mismatch")
> >
>
> It needs to be version bumped. https://bugs.gentoo.org/632602

To my knowledge then that would also mean porting the program to it, as
it's a complete python bindings rewrite. Though the python API might be
quite the same compared to wxpython-3.0.2 with some exceptions and thus
maybe not a huge work.
For Gentoo it is of course quite a bit more "fun" when now all of a
sudden "import wx" could be either wxpython-3 or wxpython-4, even after
you get them installed in parallel in a separate SLOT without file
collisions. And that's why I still haven't even looked at this huge
bunch of needed work and testing. (more people want newer gnome right
now..)

> The current version of wxPython is actually 4.0.x and is not
> compatible
> with wxGTK 3.0.4.

I'm quite sure that is not true - wxPython 4.0.x README says it works
fine with wxWidgets 3.0, or more specifically wxGTK-3.0.4.

> wxGTK needs to be bumped as well
> https://bugs.gentoo.org/577030 but there are some breaking changes in
> 3.1 vs 3.0.

And 3.1 is ABI unstable development release, and we distributions
aren't fond of them.
Latest stable wxWidgets is 3.0.4, and we are up to date there with
wxGTK.

> wxPython 3.0.2.0 is considered 'classic' and was released in 2014.
>
> I tried to use a virtualenv with system package access and tried `pip
> install wxpython` but the oldest sane version you can go back to
> 4.0.3
> which won't build with 3.0.4 version of wxGTK.
>
> This discrepancy between the two does not look like it will be fixed
> any
> time soon.

It's just a warning from the times wxpython was released more or less
in tandem with wxWidgets. When their wxpython-4 worked progressed far,
they stopped doing that, and that old warning now apparently hits. But
all it is, is a warning. It'd be more of a problem if it ended up using
wxGTK-3.1 or a future 3.2. But wxGTK-3.0.4 is just bug fixes over
3.0.2, plus some new API and tiny careful backwards compatible ABI
changes (via ELF symbol versioning, etc). It should be fine as-is.
There might be value in relaxing that warning with a downstream patch,
but personally I'd rather save that time and work on wxpython-4
instead.

Yes, it'd be nice if we had wxpython-4. Help welcome. Also help welcome
in having wxpython-3 use wxGTK:3.0-gtk3 or have a separate SLOT for
that itself as well.

wxGTK-3.1 however is of debatable value due to development series and
ABI instability combined with a C++ ABI world. Most upstream developers
seem to ship their own wx things static linked into their stuff, so
don't seem to understand the needs of Linux distributions, or just
basic good release management. I am tired of trying to have that
improved by upstream - I've tried for ~14 years now, including while
being an upstream developer myself for wxGTK over a decade ago.

I realize that some programs want to use the new features already, but
we are in the business of building a stable distribution, not throw all
development releases and the caveats from that in front of everyone,
even when manpower is lacking for even the stable versions as-is.


Mart,
wxWidgets legacy Gentoo maintainer, hoping for a replacement..