Why still depending on deprecated GTK2

Posts: 4 · medmedin2014 10 Dec 2020, 21:23

Today I run into a problem of GTK 2 dark theme on Plasma KDE 5.20.4 and after reporting the bug I got replied that GTK2 is deprecated and the app developer should upgrade their GTK library to 3 or 4. So why GTK2 is still used by FreeFileSync if it's dead ?

Operating System: Manjaro Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.20.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.76.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.4.80-2-MANJARO
OS Type: 64-bit

Posts: 7062 · Zenju 10 Dec 2020, 21:43

viewtopic.php?t=7660#p26079

Posts: 4 · medmedin2014 10 Dec 2020, 22:00

I know updating to new GUI library is time consuming, but for now I think the transition should be done because GTK2 is no longer maintained for many years and most Linux distributions will remove support for it, so the app will face some serious problems concerning building, running and compatibility with themes.

Posts: 7062 · Zenju 11 Dec 2020, 09:56

No, the issue as explained in the link is not time at all.

Posts: 306 · bgstack15 11 Dec 2020, 14:07

I have been compiling FreeFileSync for Devuan and Fedora with GTK3 for a few months now, and I've had success. I'm very loose with my requirements for what widgets look like though, but I don't think that FreeFileSync looks sloppy with gtk3.

Posts: 7062 · Zenju 14 Dec 2020, 10:38

GTK3, unlike GTK2, fails to properly update control sizes after a layout change (e.g. different font size). (Tested on CentOS 7). As a consequence all kinds of texts will be cut off (or sometimes not: GTK3's layout updating seems unpredictable).

Posts: 4 · medmedin2014 14 Dec 2020, 13:50

I worked with Java and C# and they both have layout managers/containers to manage GUI components and change their sizes according to parent containers properties and type. I don't think that GTK3 doesn't have this kind of components ?

Posts: 7062 · Zenju 14 Dec 2020, 14:14

GTK+ 3.5.1 is most likely the culprit:
https://github.com/GNOME/gtk/blob/e2afb59a0b84b13c59216379b10e08c43398d82f/NEWS#L7798

Theming:
- Optimizations to style invalidation

GTK layouts are updated only for *visible* windows. This means the common idiom of creating a window hidden, arranging its elements, and then showing it all at once is broken with GTK >= 3.5.

Posts: 306 · bgstack15 14 Dec 2020, 20:58

Well, most users have very low opinions of the GTK team. Maybe for fun you could implement FreeFileSync in QT?! I'm sure that's a ton of work though.

Posts: 4 · reckor 25 Oct 2022, 20:52

I know this is an old thread, but now that I'm going to compile it for Gentoo, I wanted to check if there is any update on this matter?

Posts: 306 · bgstack15 26 Oct 2022, 02:37

FreeFileSync 11.0 introduced support for GTK+3 per the Archive page.

The discussion about manual compilation from source links to various build recipes that make references to which version of GTK+ they use to compile the application.

On that note, Zenju, please don't migrate to GTK 4 or 40 or whatever they call it now!

Posts: 7062 · Zenju 26 Oct 2022, 07:11

Start supporting GTK3

I should have worded that differently. It sounds as if GTK3 was supported by FFS, but it's not. This were merely first steps towards a support.
Last time I checked all dialog layouts with GTK3 were broken and there was no apparent way with wxWidgets to fix them.

In general FFS will always follow wxWidgets with regards to the GUI framework, and GTK2 is still the latest GTK version there that is not broken.

Posts: 306 · bgstack15 26 Oct 2022, 14:08

Wow, I thought wxWidgets 3.2 dropped gtk2. At least the Debian package suggests that they only bother to compile wxWidgets 3.2 against gtk3.

$ dpkg -l | grep wx | grep 3

ii  libwxbase3.0-0v5:amd64               3.0.5.1+dfsg-5                      amd64        wxBase library (runtime) - non-GUI support classes of wxWidgets toolkit

ii  libwxbase3.2-0:amd64                 3.2.1+dfsg-1                        amd64        wxBase library (runtime) - non-GUI support classes of wxWidgets toolkit

ii  libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-0v5:amd64           3.0.5.1+dfsg-5                      amd64        wxWidgets Cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit (GTK 3 runtime)

ii  libwxgtk3.2-0:amd64                  3.2.1+dfsg-1                        amd64        wxWidgets Cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit (GTK 3 runtime)

ii  libwxgtk3.2-dev:amd64                3.2.1+dfsg-1                        amd64        wxWidgets Cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit (GTK 3 development)

ii  wx-common                            3.2.1+dfsg-1                        amd64        wxWidgets Cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit (common support files)

ii  wx3.2-headers                        3.2.1+dfsg-1                        all          wxWidgets Cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit (header files)