Deciding the oldest GTK+ version supported for new Geany Releases

This page is to help on deciding what versions of GTK+ stack APIs (ie. GTK+/GLib/GIO/GObject) can be relied upon or removed from Geany code by default (ie. without special wrappers and #ifdef-ing stuff).

How to contribute to this and the ground rules (PLEASE READ):

• Add your criteria in as brief and general way as possible as a top-level bullet point.
• Add your name to the criteria so we know who added it without scouring the wiki page history.
• List any details/notes about the criteria required to make it clear or explain your reasoning, indented under the criteria as sub-bullet points.
• If one of the exact criteria you were going to list is already listed, don't repeat it, just add your name and any further details (if applicable).
• Don't argue/disagree with any existing criteria listed (it's not the place), just add your own criteria/anti-criteria and we can reconcile them later.
• Don't edit other peoples criteria to suit your own criteria if it's not the exact same thing, if you aren't sure, just add a new criteria and we can merge them later.
• We aren't looking for specific version numbers here, but rather a general way to decide what is the oldest version Geany is going to support in new versions moving forward.
• Geany is not a GNOME application, please leave feelings about GNOME at the door, we aren't looking for specific GTK+ versions here (ex. GTK2).
• This is only related to new Geany versions, it doesn't apply to existing releases/versions.
• Feel free to edit other non-criteria parts of this page as much as needed to make things more clear, to add any needed ground rules, fix spelling mistakes, etc.

Please add the criteria you do think we should use to decide where to peg our oldest supported GTK+ version at:

• Newest version of official GTK+ bundle for Windows. -codebrainz
  • Unless we want to build our own binaries, we're pretty much stuck with this.
• Newest version available in common in the latest (or even 2nd to last) releases of a few of the really popular Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, etc. -codebrainz
  • This covers the widest range of users
  • Allows easier integration and testing of new features for the next release versions.
  • Allows removing old or deprecated cruft without wrapper headers and stuff.

Please add the criteria you don't think we should use to decide where to peg our oldest supported GTK+ version at:

• The lowest common denominator/long-term release distros (ex. RHEL, etc.) -codebrainz
  • Most users likely use the Geany version in their distro repositories.
  • Many corporate/educational users are not allowed to install new versions of software (no admin/root permissions).
  • Those who compile latest Geany release or development version from source can also compile GTK+ stack themselves (ex. using GTK+ tarballs or JHBuild, etc.).
  • We aren't RedHat, their long-term support policies don't necessarily apply to Geany.