GTK 4.0 [LWN.net]

GTK 4.0

Posted Dec 17, 2020 3:18 UTC (Thu) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855)
In reply to: GTK 4.0 by pabs
Parent article: GTK 4.0

Then this is a great chance to start using Flatpak to ensure that GTK2 (and GTK1!) applications can still be used on newer versions of your favourite Linux distribution.

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GTK 4.0

Posted Dec 17, 2020 3:31 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (4 responses)

Aren't the GTK2/GTK1 Flatpak runtimes going away too? Either way, the maintainers of software still depending on GTK2/GTK1 haven't bothered to migrate to GTK3/4, I doubt they will bother with Flatpak packaging either.

GTK 4.0

Posted Dec 17, 2020 9:25 UTC (Thu) by smcv (subscriber, #53363) [Link]

If GTK 2 apps are sufficiently important to you, I'm sure your help would be appreciated. The people packaging GTK 2 apps as Flatpak apps don't *have* to be their upstream maintainers, any more than the people packaging GTK 2 apps for Debian have to be their upstream maintainers.

It's also entirely possible to build Flatpak-style runtimes from Debian packages: https://salsa.debian.org/smcv/flatdeb can do this, and is used to build the Debian-10-based Steam Runtime v2 (which is not currently distributed as a Flatpak runtime itself, but is "the right shape" to be used as one). GTK 2 is available in Debian 10 and will be in Debian 11. I don't currently have enough bandwidth to be trying to build production-quality Debian runtimes alongside my other responsibilities, or to set up, sysadmin and fund a suitable hosting platform (CDN?) for distributing them, but someone could.

GTK 4.0

Posted Dec 17, 2020 14:16 UTC (Thu) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] (2 responses)

> Aren't the GTK2/GTK1 Flatpak runtimes going away too?

Why would it matter? You can bundle the latest GTK2 release and build it alongside your GTK2 application. I mean: that's the entire point of Flatpak.

GTK 4.0

Posted Dec 18, 2020 6:50 UTC (Fri) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (1 responses)

But GTK2 has reached end of life, so you can’t bundle it. If you say, this end of life stuff is nonsense, there is no reason not to keep shipping the library, then you may equally well ship it as an rpm or deb package. I don’t see that using Flatpak makes a difference either way.

GTK 4.0

Posted Dec 18, 2020 12:23 UTC (Fri) by smcv (subscriber, #53363) [Link]

> But GTK2 has reached end of life, so you can’t bundle it

GTK 2 reaching end of life means that the GTK developers are no longer willing to take responsibility for it. If you *are* willing to take responsibility for it, or at least for the subset that's used in your application, then nobody is stopping you from doing so. (Indeed, the license is irrevocable, so nobody *can* stop you.)

> If [...] there is no reason not to keep shipping the library, then you may equally well ship it as an rpm or deb package

As a downstream maintainer, I'm not exactly enthusiastic about taking responsibility for GTK 2 longer than the upstream developers do, for approximately the same reasons they have announced its EOL: every hour I spend on maintaining GTK 2 is an hour I'm not spending on something more widely beneficial, or more rewarding.

Debian will continue to ship GTK 2 as a .deb for a while, but eventually we too will be unable or unwilling to take responsibility for it. If you want to ship a third-party .deb outside Debian, or bundle it in a Flatpak app, it's up to you to maintain that in a way you are happy with (it seems to me that bundling it in a Flatpak app would be a better way to make it clear what uses you are and aren't taking responsibility for, but how you use your time and effort is not up to me).