gnc-gnome-utils C++ conversion

[John Ralls]

> On Apr 18, 2026, at 16:39, <russ.gorby at gmail.com> <russ.gorby at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I was planning to convert this library next but I’m concerned about the review burden. It has 77 C code files and about the same number of header files.
> Is there better approach than doing everything all at once?
> I’m resistant to doing a subset of .c files because I want to identify .h files in the target that can transition to .hpp files based on where they are included from and doing subset chunks could reduce the set that can transition during this effort.
> All I can think of is do minimal conversion first and then the deeper convert as phase 2.
> Thank you for your opinions.
> -russ

It actually has 71 C files, 74 C headers, 6 C++ files and 2 C++ headers.

Most of gnome-utils is used by gnome and register, so very few of the header files will be convertible until those other directories are converted too. Also nearly everything in there is derived from Gtk classes so even once you have it all compiling in C++ you’re still stuck with the GObject lifetime and memory models. So not only would converting all 71 files in a single PR be unpleasant to review, it’s going to take a lot longer than a single PR should. You really need to chunk it. There are some logical chunks: All of the tree-models (8 C files) would be a good one, and the 7 tree-views a complementary second chunk. There are 13 dialog files that could be jammed into a single PR but might be more comfortable in 2.

You might also consider going downstream instead: register is already broken into 3 directories with 14-17 C files each and it’s nearly all leaf code, meaning that very little depends on it so you’ll be able to convert more headers and need to have C linkage on fewer functions. gnome is 40 C files and again is more leaf code than is gnome-utils, but it still interacts strongly with Gtk so there’s less opportunity for converting headers or using C++ linkage.

Regards,
John Ralls

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