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GIMP is a huge code base primarily in C and GObject. This is not a popular combination. The UI toolkit is GTK, it's not exemplarily maintained for operating s
by prokoudine 4y ago
GIMP is a huge code base primarily in C and GObject. This is not a popular combination.
The UI toolkit is GTK, it's not exemplarily maintained for operating systems other than Linux.
A lot of potential new stuff used to be held back by the lack of a complete GEGL port. I think the public perception is that it is still the case (it is not).
Long development cycles used to demotivate contributors. You could write a new cool feature, and most users wouldn't see it until 3-4 years later. This has been resolved as well. Since 2.10, stable releases get new features backported from the unstable branch.
Organizationally, there is no structure like a foundation in place to help financing development. It's being talked about in the project for the past few years, no action has been taken yet.
- andrewshadura 4y agoAre you considering adding Rust to the mix?
- prokoudine 4y agoThere was some talk about making it possible to write plugins with Rust. Beyond that — no, I don't think so. I really hope not. If you start rewriting GIMP in Rust, you can pretty much kiss non-destructive editing goodbye. There will simply be no time for anything else.
- andrewshadura 4y agoI didn’t mean rewriting, not initially at least, but rather building new parts in Rust, as that would remove large parts of what is currently done manually or with macro magic (inside GLib or elsewhere). But I can see how not having enough people can make even that very difficult.