4 ms·

API changes every minor release.

vetinari 6y ago
Any specific examples? According to https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-migrating-3-x-to-y.html https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-migrating-3-x-to..., the changes were pretty minor.
- ohazi 6y ago
  They broke enough of the theming API on every minor release that for a few years it was essentially impossible to run any GTK theme other than the GNOME sanctioned default theme (Adwaita). Adwaita was updated in lock step with GTK minor releases (by the same developers), and unaffiliated theme builders were left with periodic drops of subtly different behavior and no notes or tools on how to update their themes. It drove many of them away. This was apparently a part of a deliberate strategy around GNOME branding. The GNOME developers wanted all GTK apps to have one consistent look-and-feel, they wanted people to associate this look with GNOME, and they wanted people to start thinking of GTK apps as "GNOME Apps." More recently, they crippled existing functionality for server side-window decorations in Wayland (which literally every other toolkit supports), because GNOME decided to use exclusively client-side decorations. They vetoed all of the reasonable seeming workaround proposals, essentially telling developers to either use GNOME's decorations or to manually draw the close/maximize/minimize buttons. Honestly, all of the crap that systemd gets should be redirected towards GTK/GNOME. I've never seen a group of developers act in such bad faith.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Looks like they got the worst of both worlds, with no Cocoa arising from it and a bunch of pissed off developers and users…
  - baybal2 6y ago
    I myself was turned off from working on GTK+ when it became clear that GTK is turning from "The Gimp Toolkit" to "The GNOME Toolkit"
  - nyanpasu64 6y ago
    One time GTK3 altered the CSS formatting, causing Java Swing delegating theming to GTK3 to have invisible checkboxes and other widgets.
  - p_l 6y ago
    The GNOME/GTK devs and systemd devs are pretty tightly coupled... Recall the infamous config defaults change that killed sessions impacting things like tmux/screen? Pretty sure it was done because of gnome-session...
  - vetinari 6y ago
    Theming is internal, not public API though. It is fine to break internal APIs, that's why they are internal. Themers were warned, that the styling engine was under heavy rework. Gtk people could either wait few years until it's done and be stuck with Gtk2 meanwhile, or go out with Gtk3, which has relatively stable public API and internal API under rework. It's no brainer to take the same way they took. They also communicated this, so anyone who ignored their advice has no basis to complain. They were told exactly what is going to happen, and that they will either have to keep up, or not do it yet. Switch to client-side decorations was also done for a very good reason. There's a post by Rasterman (author of the Enlightenment WM) on reddit, where he details it why - and he is not even associated with Gnome. Windows and Mac also do client-side decorations, you just cannot see it, because clients cannot connect directly to the compositors, they have to use the client side libraries that handle that. Which is exactly what Gtk does.
- wolfgke 6y ago
  RedShift1: > API changes every minor release. vetinari: > the changes were pretty minor. Was this pun intended? ;-)

Any specific examples? According to https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-migrating-3-x-to-y.html https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-migrating-3-x-to..., the changes were pretty minor.

ohazi 6y ago
They broke enough of the theming API on every minor release that for a few years it was essentially impossible to run any GTK theme other than the GNOME sanctioned default theme (Adwaita). Adwaita was updated in lock step with GTK minor releases (by the same developers), and unaffiliated theme builders were left with periodic drops of subtly different behavior and no notes or tools on how to update their themes. It drove many of them away. This was apparently a part of a deliberate strategy around GNOME branding. The GNOME developers wanted all GTK apps to have one consistent look-and-feel, they wanted people to associate this look with GNOME, and they wanted people to start thinking of GTK apps as "GNOME Apps." More recently, they crippled existing functionality for server side-window decorations in Wayland (which literally every other toolkit supports), because GNOME decided to use exclusively client-side decorations. They vetoed all of the reasonable seeming workaround proposals, essentially telling developers to either use GNOME's decorations or to manually draw the close/maximize/minimize buttons. Honestly, all of the crap that systemd gets should be redirected towards GTK/GNOME. I've never seen a group of developers act in such bad faith.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Looks like they got the worst of both worlds, with no Cocoa arising from it and a bunch of pissed off developers and users…
- baybal2 6y ago
  I myself was turned off from working on GTK+ when it became clear that GTK is turning from "The Gimp Toolkit" to "The GNOME Toolkit"
- nyanpasu64 6y ago
  One time GTK3 altered the CSS formatting, causing Java Swing delegating theming to GTK3 to have invisible checkboxes and other widgets.
- p_l 6y ago
  The GNOME/GTK devs and systemd devs are pretty tightly coupled... Recall the infamous config defaults change that killed sessions impacting things like tmux/screen? Pretty sure it was done because of gnome-session...
- vetinari 6y ago
  Theming is internal, not public API though. It is fine to break internal APIs, that's why they are internal. Themers were warned, that the styling engine was under heavy rework. Gtk people could either wait few years until it's done and be stuck with Gtk2 meanwhile, or go out with Gtk3, which has relatively stable public API and internal API under rework. It's no brainer to take the same way they took. They also communicated this, so anyone who ignored their advice has no basis to complain. They were told exactly what is going to happen, and that they will either have to keep up, or not do it yet. Switch to client-side decorations was also done for a very good reason. There's a post by Rasterman (author of the Enlightenment WM) on reddit, where he details it why - and he is not even associated with Gnome. Windows and Mac also do client-side decorations, you just cannot see it, because clients cannot connect directly to the compositors, they have to use the client side libraries that handle that. Which is exactly what Gtk does.
wolfgke 6y ago
RedShift1: > API changes every minor release. vetinari: > the changes were pretty minor. Was this pun intended? ;-)