[RFC] GTK+ 3 Migration - Alpha-grade Patchset

[John Ralls]

> On Feb 27, 2016, at 9:34 AM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
> 
>> I'm really not a distributions expert, but wouldn't Debian for example
>> wait anyway before picking up a version 3.0.0? I thought they would
>> probably stay with the latest stable series anyway.
>> 
> True. However there are also the backports. If we stick to a version of gtk+3 that's available on 
> debian stable, this will make it a lot easier for package maintainers to provide a backport of a 
> more recent version of gnucash. And so debian stable users can have a choice of the stable 
> version of a more recent one. That's an opportunity we shouldn't miss out on.
> 
> <snip>

Historically we've required that GnuCash master should be buildable on the current release of Debian Stable and RHEL/Centos so that users of those distros can contribute. IIRC the current RHEL has only gcc-4.5, which doesn't fully support C++11, so we're only requiring Debian Stable for master at the moment. If there's a compelling feature of a dependency that requires (say) Debian Testing to support then we can review that, but in general we don't want to be too cutting edge.

As with most policies, this one derives from complaints in the past. This policy arose when someone made GnuCash unbuildable for most others by using some bleeding-edge API in a dependency.

Regards,
John Ralls