Re: [gentoo-dev] www-client/chromium gtk3 support

[Daniel Campbell <zlg@gentoo.org>]

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On 09/09/2015 06:47 AM, Alexandre Rostovtsev wrote:
> On Wed, 2015-09-09 at 09:20 +0200, Paweł Hajdan, Jr. wrote:
> 
> In chromium's case (a new gtk3-based ui that needs wider testing),
> a local gtk3 USE flag does make sense.
> 
> But in general, the gnome team recommends avoiding the gtk3 flag 
> whenever possible. We definitely don't want it to become a global
> flag. We are trying to avoid the following scenario:
> 
> (1) Dozens of ebuilds add gtk3 USE flag, and the semantics of the
> gtk3 flag differ wildly in those ebuilds: (a) build an optional gui
> that happens to be based on gtk3 (instead of no gui at all); (b)
> build experimental gtk3-based gui (instead of stable gtk2 gui as 
> recommended by upstream); (c) build recommended gtk3-based gui
> (instead of legacy gtk2-based gui which is not supported by
> upstream any more); (d) build widget library and utilities for gtk3
> (possibly in parallel with gtk2 widgets and utilities); (e) build
> widget library and utilities for gtk3 (and disable gtk2 widgets and
> utilities - without making any effort to allow both gtk2 and gtk3
> support in parallel by splitting the package or renaming a few
> files). (3) Since the flag is used all over the place, some users
> try to globally enable or disable it, depending on their personal
> feelings about Adwaita's tab shapes. (4) Since the flag sometimes
> means "build a gui (instead of no gui at all)" at some point it
> gets globally enabled in some profile. (5) Users are forced to
> maintain giant lists of package.use entries to get a usable desktop
> environment. Unhappiness reigns.
> 
> In other words, to avoid the scenario that happened during
> gtk1/gtk2 transition, and which is now starting with qt4/qt5 [1].
> 
> [1]
> https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/11e3d077e0d9c953597c3d1
7f327c6b3
>
> 
How do you propose packages whose upstreams maintain both gtk2 and
gtk3 builds but don't actively push one over the other be packaged? I
currently have gtk3 and gtk2 flags, but it defaults to gtk3. Should
the gtk3 flag actually be just `gtk` to fall in line with the latest
version, and `gtk2` provide the expected versioned toolkit?

The package in question is a GUI package, so *some* toolkit version
needs to be chosen. Defaulting to gtk3 falls in line with gnome-team's
opinions while still offering gtk2 support. I think limiting it to
*only* gtk3 would be doing our users a disservice.

- -- 
Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
OpenPGP Key: 0x1EA055D6 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net
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