[webkit-gtk] About the policy of (non) updating minimum build-dependencies

[Carlos Alberto Lopez Perez]

Hi,


I think the current policy of not raising the minimum version for
WebKitGTK+ build-dependencies is perhaps too strict.

IMHO it don't makes much sense that we continue to support building with
versions of libraries that were deprecated >= 4 years ago (like GTK+
3.6). [1]

Having to support such old version of some libraries makes difficult to
use new features, or causes the code to be full of ifdefs.

And in a practical sense, I really don't think nobody is using or needs
to use WebKitGTK+ 2.12 with GTK+ 3.6. Anyone?

I really can't think of any real usage of this.

So, perhaps we can change that policy to something more practical like:

"WebKitGTK+ has to build both on the last version of Debian stable and
the last version of Ubuntu LTS".

That means that we can raise any build-dependency version to:

maxVersionDependencyWebKitGTK+ = std::min(DebianStable, UbuntuLTS);

Both this two distributions are quite conservative in regards to raising
versions of dependency and have a ~2-year release cycle. I think that
aiming at building in both, is at the same time: conservative enough and
flexible enough.

 - I think is conservative enough because I don't foresee this could
cause any problems to any downstream. In the end we are aiming at
supporting two of the most conservative/stable distributions.

 - I think this is flexible enough because it allows to raise the
version of the dependencies each 2 years at least, which allows us to
use or depend on new features more easily than nowadays.


For example, nowadays Debian 8 stable has GTK+ 3.14, and Ubuntu 16.04
LTS has GTK+ 3.18. This means that now we could raise the GTK+
dependency to 3.14.

If the next year Debian 9 includes GTK+ 3.22, then we can raise it to
3.18 (until Ubuntu 18.04 is released)


Opinions?


[1] https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKitGTK/Dependencies

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 883 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-gtk/attachments/20160706/de3b51ff/attachment.sig>