Re: Should we drop XP?

[Mart Raudsepp <leio dustbite net>]

On K, 2015-04-01 at 14:33 +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On ons, 2015-04-01 at 13:31 +0100, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> > Hi;
> >
> > On 1 April 2015 at 13:26, Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com> wrote:
> > > On ons, 2015-04-01 at 14:24 +0200, Emmanuel Briot wrote:
> > > > > Just for reference, we've already had this discussion various times:
> > > > >
> > > > >  https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2014-December/msg00055.html
> > > > >  https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2013-October/msg00145.html
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Thanks for the pointers by the way.
> > > >
> > > > I understand now that in both threads, the proposal is to drop XP support for glib.
> > > > Does this have any impact on gtk+ itself (it seems to me that none of the API
> > > > proposed in the two links above are used by gtk+) ?
> > > > If that's pure glib, I withdraw my comments since I only use glib through what
> > > > part of it is used by gtk+.
> > > > Other users might have different use, of course.
> > >
> > > Well, a future version of gtk+ may pull in a dependency on a later
> > > version of glib (which drops XP support)for some unrelated feature. This
> > > would then make it hard to use that version of Gtk+ on XP.
> >
> > If we want to keep GTK+ 2.24 working on Windows XP regardless of
> > GLib's own support, then we could add a version check inside GTK+, or
> > limit the build requirements, so that application developers still
> > targeting Windows XP can know which versions of GLib can be used to
> > build for that platform.
>
> I don't see the point though. If you're on gtk2, just use an older glib.
> The main reason to use a new glib is to be able to use a more recent
> gtk3 that depends on it.

If gtk2 stops working with a newer glib2, we've seriously failed with
it's supposed ABI guarantees.
Personally I am concerned about that throughout the stack in order to
not scare away a developer ecosystem, not GTK+ working on XP.


Mart