Upgrading GTK

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Tom Weeds wrote:
> I thinking of upgrading my GTK software so I can use some of the
> current xfce utilities (& upgrades).
> 
> But  I'm a little concerned about breaking other GTK based software by upgrading
> so 'd like to have 2 versions of GTK installed .... not sure about how
> to go about this.
> 
> I suppose the best approach would be to install the new GTK version to
> /usr/local where xfce is
> installed (compiled using installer). Then tell all xfce and utilities
> / plugins to look there for GTK.
> 
> Any detailed instructions on how I might  accomplish this task would
> be much appreciated.

I really wouldn't recommend this unless you *really* know what you're 
doing and you're willing to spend a lot of time messing around with 
environment variables and fixing broken linker commands.

In practice, upgrading gtk shouldn't break any old apps -- they've 
maintained binary compatibility throughout the 2.x series.  You'd 
probably be better off backing up your system (or at least /usr), doing 
the upgrade, and going back to the backup if you encounter problems.  If 
you're using a reasonably sane OS, I'm not sure why this is so difficult 
anyway...

	-brian