Re: new win32 port of GTK http://introspector.sourceforge.net/dia_win32.htm

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

James Michael DuPont <mdupont777 yahoo com> writes:

> --- Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> wrote:
> > 
> > James Michael DuPont <mdupont777 yahoo com> writes:
> > 
> > > Dear GTK developers
> > > I would like to introduce myself,
> > > my name is Mike DuPont, and I have been working on a new port of
> > GTK to
> > > windows. 
> > 
> > I'm not sure I quite understand.
> > 
> > There can be only a single port of GTK+ to Win32. Anything else
> > would be ridiculous. 
> The current port is difficult to use. It is based on the idea of
> downloading dlls from all over the net. There is no place that you can
> get all the requirements for building GTk and *all* prerequisites.

Well, that's just as true for the Unix builds as well, except that
the dependencies are more common there.

> Many people who distribute the dlls dont put the source in the same
> place as required by the GPL section 3. 

If you know of such circumstances, please let me know (privately)
and I'll contact them. 
 
[...]
 
> >There has to be a single place for people
> > to send patches. 
> I will also be submitting my patches to you. In fact, most of the
> patches are for the debian cross compiling, the patches to the
> makefiles, etc. All patches will be submitted to the respective people,
> but i can tell you that debian version of GTK is not the version that
> you use, they apply a patch to it.

The Debian GTK+ package maintainers are free to include patches;
we include a couple of patches in the Red Hat GTK+ package.
If the patches they use are of general interest, I'm quite
confident that they know it is in their best interest to send
them upstream.
 
[...]

> > What, exactly, do you mean by "port"?
> 
> a port is a when you setup a new way to compile a software in a new
> environment. Ie : porting to a new os, new compiler or even porting
> from a library to another. 
> 
> My port of the gtk and other tools is new because it sets a standard as
> to how to get the source, how to configure, and how to build and
> install a win32 app from inside linux : dpkg-buildpackage, dpkg -i
> 
> So I am creating a new distribution of GTK, using a new compiler, and
> providing a new build environment. You can say that we have "ported" 10
> packages to the "Debian GNU/Linux Mingw32 Cross Compiler build
> Environment"

OK, I think this is a reasonable use of the word port. However, it
doesn't correspond to the way we use it in the GTK+ world. 
Ports of GTK+ are code additions to make it possible to compile GTK+
with new windowing systems.

You "just" have a build system :-)

> > > The reason for this port is the mess with the dlls and the problems
> > > with recompiling the entire package. While this may not be that
> > > important to all of you, it is difficult to make broad changes to
> > the
> > > framework with the current setup.
> > 
> > What sort of "broad changes to the framework" are you considering?
> like static compilation, or compiling it with a new compiler. 
> I am working on a gcc patch, and to use on a source program properly I
> need to recompile it,and all the modules again.
> 
> > 
> > I'm am also concerned about the difficulty of compiling the Win32
> > port of GTK+ currently, but any fixes (and the biggest one is
> > simply documentation) absolutely need to be done in conjunction 
> > with Tor.
> 
> Tor knows about my issues, and hans as well. 
> 
> Hans told me to go to hell after i asked him for the sources for the
> dlls he is posting, according the GPL.
> Tor is a lot nicer, and has been helpful.
> 
> I tell you, many people are not happy with the current state, and i
> dont think that the current distributions of the gtk binarys are gpl
> compliant. That is why it is so hard to get all the sources. If we were
> to take the gpl by the letter, you need to provide all the sources of
> all the non-standard dlls that you have, the entire toolchain as I am
> doing it with the binaries. At least with my port, you will have a copy
> of all the sources in a standard place, and a standard way to build
> them.

Let me just lay down a ground rule here -- this is my personal
opinion, but I don't think any of the GTK+ team will disagree:

 - We take LGPL compliance seriously. If someone is distributing
   binaries of an LGPL library, they typically have an obligation 
   to provide the sources as well. If someone sees problems
   in this area with respect to libraries maintained by the
   GTK+ team, please contact the GTK+ team privately. 
   (Mail me, or gtkdev gtk org)

 - Being able to compile our libraries easily is important;
   if the libraries are hard to compile, then we will get
   less contributions.

 - These two isues are entirely unrelated. If people are 
   unhappy with the ease of compilation of GTK+ on a platform,
   they should work on making it easier (as you seem to be
   doing), not try to force people to make it easy to compile
   for them by GPL lawyering.

Regards,
                                        Owen