On Mon, Feb 08, 2021 at 02:59:45PM +0000, Peter Stuge wrote:
> Hanno Böck wrote:
> > > "It does mean, however, that GTK 2 has reached the end of its life. 
> > > We will do one final 2.x release in the coming days, and we encourage
> > > everybody to port their GTK 2 applications to GTK 3 or 4."
> > 
> > I read that as there will be one more gtk2 release and none after that.
> > 
> > This seems to imply:
> > * When there's a security flaw in gtk2 there won't be a fix from
> >   upstream.
> > * When there's an incompatibility with new infrastructure (e.g. new gcc
> >   version / new glibc / changing API of libraries gtk depends on) there
> >   will be no updates from upstream.
> > 
> > This means in all those instances maintainers will have to get patches
> > from somewhere. We'll likely end up with some form of
> > gtk-2.x-r[largenumber] with a large patchset at some point.
> > Maintaining that will be an increasing burden.
> > 
> > No urgency, but a sign to slowly move off gtk2.
> 
> Until there's a relevant flaw that will remain unfixed or there is
> significant incompatibility with infrastructure (recurse my argument)
> no signs actually exist.

Waiting until such a problem pops up and bites everyone before doing
anything about it doesn't sound like a good way to handle it.

> 
> Assuming that there will be a significant maintenance burden which
> affects all uses doesn't seem rational - hence my question.
> 
> The blog post shouldn't be misunderstood. The intended audience seems
> to be application developers, encouraging them to port applications,
> not so much distributions.

If an application never ports, do you expect the distribution to
maintain that package ad infinitum?

> 
> Distributions quite often overlook that they wield much power, and
> thus also have much responsibility.
> 
> Of course, GTK maintainers in Gentoo choose what to work on, and have
> made many (only?) excellent choices.
> 
> I'm merely pleading for rational choices based on actual problems.
> 
> 
> //Peter
> 

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