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0 pointscycloptic5y ago0 comments

Jumping from dependency to dependency forever hoping that someone else is always going to do the right thing is not a viable option long term, even moreso if you want to build a large application that lasts a while.

Realistically, most people who decide to ditch GTK seem to switch to Qt and either start contributing there or pay for consulting/LTS/commercial licenses eventually, because that is the only comparably modern option for native widgets on Linux/BSD.

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hda25y ago· 2 in thread

Moving from one toolkit to another is an expensive and tedious process. Speaking from experience, those who need to do it tend to do it once and they do their homework to make sure that the toolkit they choose has a sane API development process.

So yes, jumping from dependency to dependency is not a viable option long term. Luckily you only need to jump away from GTK once.

cyclopticOP5y ago

You also only need to jump away from Qt once, if that doesn't work for you for whatever reason. If the toolkit is open source, and your "homework" doesn't include looking into the contribution process and how it goes working with upstream, then I would say you are doing yourself a disservice considering how this is the most critical dependency that a GUI application has. That gets more important the more your project gets invested in the toolkit, doubly so if you aren't paying for support. (Essentially that means you're supporting it yourself or relying on flaky advice from IRC and stack overflow, all the usual caveats apply there. Ignoring upstream and refusing to talk to them or collaborate is really not going to help you in that case)

hda25y ago

Of course, but that "homework" would also include considering the incentives and goals of the authors behind the toolkit. If we took the authors of Qt as an example, their incentives and goals are clear. If they needlessly break their API, they will loose their customers and go bankrupt. These incentives have translated in one of the most smoothest major GUI toolkit transitions I've seen (Qt4 to Qt5).

As far as contribution processes go, both upstreams are equally tedious to work with. I doubt GTK would be willing to accept your code contribution if you added systray icons support back to GTK4 for example. So while the contribution process does matter, it doesn't matter as much as you make it out to be.

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