kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Maciej Sumiński <maciej.suminski@xxxxxxx>]

On 10/18/18 9:48 PM, seth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Hi Wayne-
> 
> We should probably start moving the default build on some Linuxes over
> to gtk3 as the gtk2/3 conflicts were one of the prime drivers to the
> GAL-legacy switch in eeschema.  This requires turning on
> -DUSE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT as well for these linuxes.
> 
> Unfortunately, this is an either/or in that Debian9 (and derivatives in
> Ubuntu) doesn't provide a python-wxgtk built against gtk2 and Debian
> 10/Ubuntu 18.04 don't provide python-wxgtk built against gtk3.
> 
> If we are keeping the Legacy canvas for 5.1, we'll need to iron out GTK3
> bugs.  This is potentially a not insubstantial amount of work as right
> now, GTK3 legacy view in pcbnew and gerbview does not display anything
> and a very garbled display in footprint editor.
> 
> How much effort do we want to expend on keeping legacy running in new
> systems?  Should we consider disabling legacy canvas if we enable GTK3
> in the build?  FWIW, GTK3 works fine for page layout editor and the
> various buttons and menus as far as I have found so far.  Also, GAL
> works as I expect
> 
> -Seth

Hi Seth,

As far as I remember there are two problems related to GTK versions:
- Having KiCad and wxPython build againt different toolkits results in
wxWidgets symbol conflicts when wxPython is loaded.

This issue should be resolved by linking KiCad against the same library
as is used for building wxPython.

- Rendering/printing problems in eeschema and pcbnew.

This one is already fixed by providing GAL renderer for eeschema and
pcbnew. As you have correctly noticed, legacy renderer is broken with
GTK3 in pcbnew and eeschema, so I think it is reasonable to disable it
there in the initial stage. Later, as Wayne says, we can remove the
legacy renderer in pcbnew to simplify significant parts of the code. The
one day eeschema will get the Tool Framework and can follow the pcbnew
example.

These steps should make KiCad GTK version agnostic and keep our users happy.

Cheers,
Orson

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