[Gtk-sharp-list] GTK# on Mac Field Report

[Michael Hutchinson]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 10:13 AM, Mike Kestner <mkestner at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 23:33 -0800, Chuck Esterbrook wrote:
>
>> I originally thought GTK# would be well cared for because major apps
>> use it, like MonoDevelop for Mac. But now I'm thinking that the
>> wizards behind such apps are using a "custom GTK#" they tweaked to
>> work for them while the main GTK# distribution, um, ... rots? Sorry
>> for the strong word, but I don't see any GTK# love in these release
>> notes...
>
> The "wizards" behind MonoDevelop are the primary contributors to the
> Gtk# distribution for mac.  As has been described by others, Gtk# on the
> mac is mostly limited by Gtk+ on the mac, which is a work in progress
> and is improving steadily.  If you want it to improve faster and be more
> "well-cared for", we would welcome your contributions.
>
> My understanding is that we are shipping a custom patched gtk+ in our
> mac installer.  Whether it improved in 2.4.3 and just wasn't documented
> in the release notes is not something I can speak to confidently.
> Perhaps Michael Hutchinson can comment on that.

Nope, it wasn't improved in 2.4.3. It still uses the 2.17.x+patches
that 2.4.2.3_4 used. We need to rebase our patches on top of 2.18.x
and ship that, but it's a lot of work to rebase, and make sure that
it's stable and doesn't have regressions. There are also some specific
issues affecting MD that we'd like to resolve before making everyone
download a new package.

> Gtk# on the mac is not rotting.  It is important to many people.
> Unfortunately, there are a considerably larger number of people who want
> Gtk# to work on mac than there are people who have been willing to
> contribute anything to make it work.

Exactly. I'd also point out that MonoDevelop uses the same version of
GTK+ that any other GTK# app on Mac gets, but we have some hacks and
fixes in MD itself for a few issues, since it's usually much easier to
patch specific issues in MD itself than to build and test a new Mono
framework, and make everyone download and install the 50MB package.

-- 
Michael Hutchinson
http://mjhutchinson.com