On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 05:13:09 +0200, <pcg@xxxxxxxx ( Marc) (A.) (Lehmann )> said: >because that's what they do, what gimp does, what every other project >does. Gimp 1.1.x, as I recall, was set up to work with any GTK 1.1.y for sufficiently large y. We bumped y as it became necessary. The HEAD revision was only occasionally required, and usually only for a short time until GTK+ released a new unstable version. I don't know what "every project" you've worked on. This is a completely INSANE model for any project of any size that wants to actually get anything done. (Of course, project leadership in most open-source projects is almost completely nonexistent, but that is no reason why GIMP development has to be that way. It wasn't in 1.0, at least. I wasn't as involved in 1.2.) > if the head revision isn't compilable nobody can wotk with it. Which is precisely why GIMP developers should not rely on it. GIMP developers are developing GIMP, not GTK+. If an individual developer WANTS to work with the head revision, that's fine, but development should not REQUIRE it, and developers should be wary of introducing dependencies on features not yet stabilized. You should require the OLDEST version that suffices, not the newest. (This is a general rule of using libraries, not one specific to GIMP's usage of GTK+.) Application authors should NEVER assume that their users like to live on the cutting edge. Most users do not. I only upgrade the Linux systems that I'm paid to maintain when something breaks, and we should not force users to upgrade a nonbroken library unless the upgrade provides essential (or at least strongly desirable) functionality. >As sven has said, they made an API freeze recently. That means they >are already pretty late in the development phase. I think it's >totally unreasonable to expect non-compilability on a regular >base. How often couldn't you compile gimp-1.1.2x? I broke 0.99.x and 1.1.x on several occasions. Kelly
