Integrating GFC into Xfce

[Benedikt Meurer]

Jeff Franks wrote:
> There doesn't seem to be any disagreement with integrating GFC into Xfce 
> so I should get started. I do want this integration to succeed so I 
> prepared to go out of my way (by compromizing) to make it so. There are 
> over 1000 GFC source files to rebrand. That is a lot of text search and 
> replace, as well as a manual check later of each file, so I only want to 
> do it once. Before I can get started there are some things I need to 
> know so could I hear your ideas on the following
> 
> 1. How should GFC be integrated into Xfce? Should the rebranded binding 
> be a separate module that installs into a separate base directory from 
> 'xfce4'.

Dunno what you mean by 'separate base directory', but here's what I'd 
consider best:

Header files go to $includedir/xfce4/gfc/ (.pc files need to be adjusted)

Libraries go to $libdir/ using libgfc<xx>-<major-version>.<suffix> for 
the file names, see http://www106.pair.com/rhp/parallel.html for the reason.

(pkg-config files to $libdir/pkgconfig as usual, data files to $datadir, 
etc.)

> If it should then perhaps the rebranded binding should have its own name 
> as well, such as 'Xfce Foudation Classes' or 'Xfce Developement 
> Platform' or something else. If it shouldn't then a separate name wont 
> be needed. There would just be two new Xfce modules, one that wraps GLib 
> and one that wraps GTK+, that install into the 'xfce4' base directory.

I'd vote for using 'Xfce Foundation Classes' to make it clear, that its 
part of Xfce, not Gnome (most people think Gxx -> Gnome). So it should 
read XFC instead of GFC (IMHO).

> 2. Should the rebranded binding follow the GTK+ or Xfce4 version numbers.
> 
> If the binding follows the Xfce4 version numbers the GLib and GTK+ 
> wrappers would only be updated with each new desktop environment 
> release. This would mean that if there had been no Xfce release for some 
> time the GLib/GTK+ binding would not be up to date and users wouldn't 
> have access to newer GTK widgets. My initial thought is that following 
> the GTK+ version numbers would be best. Xfce wont actually use the 
> binding itself so there is no real need for the binding's version 
> numbers to be tied to the desktop enviroment's.

I don't have any strong opinion here, but until now, our policy was to 
choose one Gtk+ release as target for the stable versions (2.0 for 4.0, 
2.2 for 4.2, etc.). Maybe GFC/XFC should also follow this policy for 
consistency.

> 3. What to call the new Xfce modules? The current GFC modules are called 
> GFC-Core which wraps GLib and GFC-UI which wraps ATK/GDK/GTK/Pango.
> 
> The new module names could be something like Xfce-GLib and Xfce-GTK, or 
> XfGLib and XfGTK.

I think Xfce-Core and Xfce-UI are ok, where Xfce-Core wraps glib and 
libxfce4util, and Xfce-UI wraps the Gtk/Gdk/etc. stuff and libxfcegui4.

> Jeff Franks.

regards,
Benedikt