hasufell posted on Thu, 10 Sep 2015 17:35:53 +0200 as excerpted: >> Again, I'm saying that maintainers should be free to support multiple >> versions if they wish to do so. They should not be required to do so. >> And yes, I do realize that this limits options for users, but they're >> welcome to proxy-maintain packages that do support the versions they >> wish to use. If they want to fork upstream they're even welcome to do >> that, but obviously that isn't going to happen often. >> >> I just don't think we should be in the business of saying "no" here. > > Again, your proposed use case is 1) imaginary 2) currently impossible to > support, because there are lots of applications which either force gtk3 > in the ebuild or have only gtk3 supported upstream. It will be pretty > much impossible to not have gtk3 installed or loaded into RAM, unless > you don't use a DE in the first place and stick to terminals.
Pretty much impossible? For a kde and gtk2-based software user? Not so much. I've only one package here using gtk3, a relatively recent addition to a set in my world-sets file, and it's a rather optional package (solaar, for managing my Logitech wireless devices), with a CLI- only option, so I've been thinking about disabling gtk3 support just to avoid having to hassle the gtk3 and supporting software updates. One thing I learned fairly quickly with gentoo is that unlike binary distros, over time there's a real cost to one-off or two-off dependencies, because they aren't just single-time builds, but are generally updated and must be repeatedly rebuilt over time. For things you /might/ use, or do use occasionally, but only perhaps yearly or less often, it's often more efficient to merge on-demand, then unmerge again, until they happen to be needed again, than it is to keep them and dependencies current the whole time. (Tho obviously, this applies more to ~arch users who do --deep updates, than others.) In that context, given the current usage of gtk3 in-tree, it's quite realistic for a user to wish to avoid gtk3, if they've a number of gtk2- only apps (as I do). Similarly the other way of course, for those with a number of gtk3 apps, they may wish to avoid gtk2 and gtk2-only apps, if they can, to avoid it being on their system, tho AFAIK with both chromium and firefox being gtk2 at this point, that's a bit more difficult. Unfortunately, gentoo/gtk's attitude makes this much more difficult than it should be. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
