RE: GTK+ modularization

["Jesse Donaldson" <Jesse Donaldson palmsource com>]

Just to provide a slightly different perspective on this...

We're quite serious about using GTK+ in the embedded space.  Unlike many
embedded devices, we're not just shipping with a custom set of built-in
apps.  We'll be exposing APIs and want to provide a capable platform for
3rd party app development.  GTK+, obviously, will form the basis of the
application framework.  

We aren't trying to squeeze a system into 2 or 3 MB, but optimizing ROM
size is still a concern for us.  The less ROM we require, the cheaper
devices based on our platform will be.  And of course, there's a point
at which too large a ROM prevents us from being competitive.  I think
the bigger concern for us, though, (at least currently) is performance.
Embedded devices have smaller caches and less RAM.  I'm not personally
involved with the performance investigation, but my impression is that a
big issue is reducing the number of pages in the working set of a
typical application in order to reduce paging.  Dave can probably jump
in here and correct me if I'm wrong, but removing "unused" stuff
sprinkled throughout the GTK+ libraries would be great.  Beyond the
classes of stuff Matthias removed in his patch, it seems likely that
there's a set of widgets which are really valuable on the desktop, but
which aren't particularly useful on a handheld (at least not as
currently implemented).  At least for PalmSource's purposes, those would
also be good candidates.

I'm pleased to see this discussion - we've certainly been planning
internally to try stripping unneeded widgets, although we haven't
settled on a list yet.  We're still using v2.6, so folks may not care,
but I'm happy to share our results (once we've obtained them).  Also, if
he'd like, I can try to put Mathias in touch with whoever will be
looking at this on our end.


Jesse

-----Original Message-----
From: gtk-devel-list-bounces gnome org
[mailto:gtk-devel-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Mike Emmel
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 12:25 PM
To: Sean Kelley
Cc: gtk-devel-list gnome org
Subject: Re: GTK+ modularization

On 7/14/06, Sean Kelley <sean sweng gmail com> wrote:
> I think you have to be careful about even embedded specs.  For 
> example, I am working on a device that has 1 to 4GB of flash space and
> 64 to 128MB of RAM.  A Nokia 770 would be a good parallel, although 
> with less flash space on board.  These sort of specs are more in line 
> with consumer devices.  They are still running arm processors.
>
> Sean
>

I guess my point on embedded is there is some minimal code size that
should be the target and we need to fit as much as possible in there.

Generally on embedded devices you can have X amount of code.
If X is large then just use the full implementation 1-4GB of flash is
not common if you have it then your not code size constrained.

I'm basically suggesting that the overall code base should build in

2 4 6 8 ... versions.

On top of the base builds you would have your custom widgets.
Or you need to customize the smallest build if its too large.

My point is lets first figure out what the smallest build should be.
Adding stuff is the easy part.

Is the smallest build 2 mb 4 ??  Is it a useful build ?

My approach has been to focus for now is on using only gdk not gtk.

But its not a complete solution since you could use a really small
subset of gtk.