[virt-tools-list] RFC: drop virt-viewer support for GTK-2 and use GTK-3 features

[Marc-André Lureau]

----- Original Message -----
> On Mon, Jun 09, 2014 at 12:50:15PM +0200, Guido Günther wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 09, 2014 at 11:29:33AM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> > > Currently the virt-viewer codebase is written to build with both GTK-2
> > > and GTK-3. This was primarily so that we could continue to support use
> > > of virt-viewer on older distros like RHEL-6 which lack GTK-3 support.
> > > GTK-3 has been around for 3 years now and RHEL-7 with GTK-3 support is
> > > not unreasonably far off in the future.
> > 
> > I think that's a great idea!
> > 
> > > So I'm thinking it could be a good time for us to drop support for
> > > GTK-2, and actually make use of some of the more interesting GTK-3
> > > features we've been holding back on.  In particular I think we should
> > > make use of the application menus in the GNOME shell top bar, and/or
> > > the new GTK design whereby apps have a drop down menu in their window
> > > titlebar. This would let us kill the current menu bar free'ing up
> > > more
> > 
> > Besides of "help" this would probably be the window title bar
> > (GtkHeaderBar) since the actions are per window/wm (like attaching a
> > USB device).
> 
> Oh and it also means we'd be able to depend on GSettings to store
> preferences, and not have to have two codepaths for GConf vs GSettings

I am not fond of this change, because we have to continue support for
Windows (and other OS) and as you mentioned RHEL6.

Afaik, gtk3 is not very well supported on Windows, because most popular Gtk+
applications running on Windows are still using gtk2, so testing has been
very limited, and gtk3 is moving too quickly for Windows devs to follow.

I am aware of some of the issues we have with gtk2 vs gtk3, but I think
it's still possible to maintain both.

Furthermore, I think fancier UI/design and integration with GNOME should go
in Boxes instead.