Re: First deprecate APIs and then remove them in the next major version

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 4:41 PM, Sébastien Wilmet <swilmet gnome org> wrote:

GDK, GSK and GTK are now part of the same *.so library. If GtkClipboard
still worked fine just before the commit that removed it, it would have
been possible to first deprecate GtkClipboard and then removing it in
3.9x+2 (see my comment below).

Of course if GtkClipboard didn't work anymore, then it needed to be
removed. Or maybe it was possible to port GtkClipboard to the new GDK
API, but this would have been more work for the GTK developers. It all
depends if you want to provide a smooth experience to port apps.

I know this may sound harsh, but: If you want things to work differently, send patches.

Patches to the migration guide are welcome too.

The bulk of the work done on GTK4 so far has been done by 3 or 4 people, only one of

which gets payed to work fulltime on GTK+.

Maintaining compatibility layers costs and constantly gets in the way of large-scale

refactorings like the ones that are happening in gtk 3.9x now.

Note that we haven't really asked application developers to port to the current 3.9x releases

yet, because they are still in flux.