Hi,
This has split into 2 different issues again, replying twice with
appropriate subjects.
Sven Neumann wrote:
David Neary <bolsh@xxxxxxxx> writes:
I think that we could perhaps do the version bump in an organised
way this time, at least?
What are you trying to say here? I don't remember any unorganized
version bumps.
In the past, I recall there being problems with the trasition from GTK+
1.2 to 1.3, Ipersonally heard about the version bump from GTK+ 2.0 to
2.2 when the build failed, idem for the fontconfig requirement, idem for
the version bumps in automake during the release cycle.
By "in an organised way", I mean simply that we make a decent effort
before changing build requirements to let people know that they're going
to be changed, when, why, and what they need to do to keep a working
GIMP CVS build environment. This is not the trivial problem you're
making it out to be.
We should wait for the gtk+-2.4 release and then wait another week or
two to give distributors a chance to prepare packages. The rule of
thumb in the past has been to wait for the package to appear in debian
testing which is a rather conservative distrubtion.
I think that we should definitely have a release from CVS before
changing (at least a week before changing) and have something in the
release notes saying that the GTK+ version will bump in the next
release. And pair this up with a mail to gimp-developer saying when the
change will happen, and how to keep things working.
The bump from gtk+ 2.0 to 2.2, for example, was not just a simple
version bump, because there were about half a dozen other packages that
needed to have recent versions installed. It would have been nice to
have a small list, and a couple of days notice that things were going to
change.
> No-one said we want to do that. What are you talking about? We talk
> about depending on GTK+-2.4 which will be the latest stable release of
> the GIMP toolkit at the time we start to use it. You don't want us to
> ignore the features it offers and use an unmaintained version instead,
> do you?
No-one who is not a GNOME developer will have GTK+ 2.4.0 installed on
their machine. The first time people will have this software installed
is the early-adopters of GNOME 2.6.0 in April and May. So I don't mind
being on GTK+ 2.4 at that stage. I don't even mind being on it earlier,
as long as we don't assume that people will just have it installed. That
means putting some work into letting people know how to migrate their
build stuff (see above).
At the heart of this issue is whether we want to make it easy for people
to build the GIMP. I think we do. Depending on software that they
haven't installed yet makes it a bit harder. Breaking build environments
by changing dependencies without giving people adequate warning does
too. I want to avoid things that make it harder for casual people to
keep up to date with CVS GIMP. And that's all.
Cheers,
Dave.
--
Dave Neary
bolsh@xxxxxxxx
