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apprt: make gtk-ng the default apprt on Linux (#8235) 

The journey to rewrite our legacy GTK backend to a full GObject-based
backend is complete! The full background and motivation can be found in
the original PR: #7961. ~75 PRs later, we've reached **full parity**
with the legacy GTK backend.

Throughout the process, we've tested every feature under Valgrind, and
this build is fully clean of memory leaks and undefined access. Its
impossible to test the existing GTK backend because its full of false
positives, but based on my experience working on `-ng`, I think its
impossible we got it right. This isn't a dig at any of our GTK subsystem
maintainers; I've simply found its very complicated to get all the
memory management behaviors right with GTK. There are subtle, easy to
miss, weakly documented things, such as [clearing weak refs on
dispose](7548dcfe63).[^1]
The point is, **gtk-ng is much higher quality than legacy.**

There is only regression we know of (#8208). I'm willing to swap the
default despite this because the improvements not just in memory safety
but also behavior: splits now support spatial navigation, better
equalization behavior, etc.

At this point, I think we should swap the default to see if we missed
anything else.

[^1]: This isn't a dig at Gnome developers either. Documenting these
details is hard, too.
pull/8236/head
Mitchell Hashimoto 2025-08-14 14:05:16 -07:00 committed by GitHub
parent b7913f09ad a148adc5e4
commit 264dbf9e46
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GPG Key ID: B5690EEEBB952194
2 changed files with 16 additions and 9 deletions
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20
src/apprt.zig
View File

@ -60,20 +60,22 @@ pub const Runtime = enum {
/// This is only useful if you're only interested in the lib only (macOS).
none,
/// GTK-backed. Rich windowed application. GTK is dynamically linked.
gtk,
/// GTK4. The "-ng" variant is a rewrite of the GTK backend using
/// GTK-native technologies such as full GObject classes, Blueprint
/// files, etc.
/// GTK4. Rich windowed application. This uses a full GObject-based
/// approach to building the application.
@"gtk-ng",
/// GTK-backed. Rich windowed application. GTK is dynamically linked.
/// WARNING: Deprecated. This will be removed very soon. All bug fixes
/// and features should go into the gtk-ng backend.
gtk,
pub fn default(target: std.Target) Runtime {
// The Linux default is GTK because it is full featured.
if (target.os.tag == .linux) return .gtk;
// The Linux default is GTK because it is a full featured application.
if (target.os.tag == .linux) return .@"gtk-ng";
// Otherwise, we do NONE so we don't create an exe and we
// create libghostty.
// create libghostty. On macOS, Xcode is used to build the app
// that links to libghostty.
return .none;
}
};

5
src/build/GhosttyDist.zig
View File

@ -25,6 +25,11 @@ pub fn init(b: *std.Build, cfg: *const Config) !GhosttyDist {
try resources.append(alloc, gtk.resources_c);
try resources.append(alloc, gtk.resources_h);
}
{
const gtk = SharedDeps.gtkNgDistResources(b);
try resources.append(alloc, gtk.resources_c);
try resources.append(alloc, gtk.resources_h);
}
// git archive to create the final tarball. "git archive" is the
// easiest way I can find to create a tarball that ignores stuff