Start of Gtk3 to Gtk4 #1909
Start of Gtk3 to Gtk4 #1909
Conversation
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I guess it's time for a future branch to base this on. That aside I think you might be going at this the hard way. Step 1 is to turn on deprecation warnings, still building with Gtk3, and get all of those fixed. We could conceivably merge that into stable. I think Step 2 has to be to convert to GApplication. Step 3 is to rewrite as many uses of removed API listed in the migration document as possible while remaining with Gtk3. For example we have to replace GtkToolBar with a GtkBox styled as a Toolbar. On the subject of menu accelerators, they've removed the old Is this so much work that we should consider putting it into changing GUI toolkits instead? Gtk4 version shouldn't matter that much at this stage: Anything they deprecate after Gtk-4.0.0 won't be removed until Gtk5 so we can keep using it while we migrate, but we can do ourselves a favor going forward by trying to clean out the deprecations as part of major releases, e.g. if GC6's benchmark distro is Ubuntu 24.04LTS then whatever is in that (I suppose it will be Gtk-4.14.0) then we should fix all deprecations to that Gtk version. |
I did do this first and if I did it correctly there are none in GnuCash. The only one it did find was in WebKit where they are still using GtkAction.
Would need to think about that...
I saw that and will have a think about what that would involve. Maybe I misunderstood some of the prep work or just thought I would see what building with gtk4 would throw up and then fix it.
I do not know, I would like to try/fix a few more changes. |
No harm (other than time expended) in experimenting. Looks like we'll be doing a lot of that in this migration. My thought on getting as much as possible done in Gtk3 is to reduce the variables at play as we rewrite the code.
OK. |
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Whoops sorry didn't see these new conflicts dialog-commodity.c[pp] and gnc-currency-edit.c[pp] |
No worries, I will fix when I next push, just carry on committing as normal. |
That would require a GTK4 module in |
Which we'll probably have to do and submit as a PR. |
This was what I was studying when I ran out of time for gnucash. I had my thoughts on how to go forward with this, but hadn't tried anything in code just yet. I still would like to work this out and may find some time in the coming weeks. Can you leave the GApplication conversion part aside for me ? |
Will do, I am just looking at conversion of dialogs and some custom widgets. |
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@gjanssens One thing to consider for migrating to GApplication is timing of loading the book in relation to starting the event loop. As you know a long-running complaint from Mac users is that they can't double-click a data file to get GnuCash to open it because macOS uses an event to tell the app what to load and GnuCash loads the last-used file before it can handle events. |
Indeed. I don't know the insides yet, but from what I remember from my reading so far is that in the GApplication world the request to open a file comes in in the form of an event. I don't know how the MacOS backend implements this, but I was hoping on macos such an event would be generated as well when the user clicks on a GnuCash data book. So my idea here was to process the pending event queue at the appropriate moment early on in the application startup and once empty check whether or no a file has been opened. If not, open the last opened file as found in our history list. Would that work ? |
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Should do. Here's how gtk-mac-integration (the Gtk2/3 library that preceded GtkApplication) handles it. I'm not as familiar with the GApplication implementation but I expect that it would be pretty similar. There is, BTW, a UX regression for macOS with Gtk4. |
In Gtk4 you are no longer able to access the event structure so use the accessor functions to retrieve values
In Gtk4 you are no longer able to access the event structure so use the accessor functions to retrieve values These files access the event structure with no equivalent accessor function. Not sure of correct change, may need to wait for Gtk4 change.
In Gtk4 you are no longer able to access the event structure so use the accessor functions to retrieve values. Register sheet and header changes
In Gtk4 you are no longer able to access the event structure so use the accessor functions to retrieve values Register components.
In Gtk4 you are no longer able to access the event structure so use the accessor functions to retrieve values ComboCell and CompletionCell needed more changes and not sure why, just doing the normal change was not enough as this resulted in characters appearing twice on my build machine but not on Windows or Fedora38.
By changing to GtkEventControllerKey for combocell and completioncell fixes issue for double key presses.
Start to use GtkEventControllerkey for some key_press_event's, may need further changes.
Change some entries to remove state and comment out others not sure about.
Widgets by default are always visible, may need to change some for toplevel windows, dialogs and popovers
Use gtk_widget_set_visible instead
Use gtk_widget_set_visible instead
Use gtk_widget_set_visible instead
Add function gnc_entry_get/set_text and use that instead
Add function gnc_entry_get/set_text and use that instead
Add function gnc_entry_get/set_text and use that instead
Rename the gnc_dialog_run function to gnc_warning_dialog_run as it uses the preference warning settings and make it modal and pause the main loop so it can return a value. Create a new gnc_dialog_run along the lines of above and change only references to gtk_dialog_run used to create message dialogs to this function. This may need a rethink but for now is OK if only temporary, eventually the widget used will be a GtkAlertDialog.
All builder ui signals are connected by default and can use the current object to pass user data. This may need changing...
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I have been trying some changes on and off as seen here, the first image shows a right mouse menu and the next shows the column menu. The text size can be controlled via CSS but on first looks could not see how to change the height/spacing but that will come to me...
You will also notice I have added a toolbar, seen below. This image shows the difference in named icon image sizes, most of them are
The other area I have been looking at is the tools menu, I have done a first attempt at converting those dialogs to windows, still modal but possibly returning values via callbacks. There are still many changes required moving to gtk4 but am getting some messages in the trace file which appear to of been fixed in the 4.10 series. My next attempt at changes will be possibly changing a GtkCombo to a GtkDropDown or the dense calendar/register as they use a lot of cairo. If that is successful, I think I will up my gtk4 version to 4.10.5 and see what that shows up. |
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@Bob-IT Nice work. Do you mind if I push a fix to the CI? |
For stable, yes just do it, for this PR I am building with just |
Macros can't have a space between the name and the opening parenthesis.
I meant for this PR: jralls@e4bdad8 It turns out that the current Ubuntu-latest image had gtk-4.6 and of course there's other work to get it to build on macOS so I turned off everything except the Arch Linux docker test. |
Progress on this front, of a sort: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/7260 in which Emmanuele Bassi explains that for the most part it's the application's responsibility to provide the common keyboard shortcuts. Gtk4 only provides shortcuts for its own widgets. I derive from that that apps can pretty easily create alternate versions and Arjen Molenaar redid the MR to provide the alternate versions in Gtk4. I don't think Emmanuele or Matthias Clasen would go for a macro but nothing keeps us from doing one: |
I have had a look at moving from Gtk3 to 4 and thought I would push what I have done.
Starting with 5.6 built without any Aqbanking and OFX support to try and make life easier I did some of the pre-migration changes as in the first 7 commits. This was mainly around not accessing the event structure directly but by function calls.
After that I pushed Webkit out of the way and changed to
gtk version 4.8.3and started compiling, on error I tried to replace the offending function and do a global find/replace or comment it out for later investigation. In total this was 69 commits, up toChange gtk_init_checkcommit. The next commit fixed any errors in the trace file when I tried to start a built version.There are a lot of changes and some widgets have gone like
GtkContainer,GtkToolBarandGtkStatusBaris on it's way out. The main layout widgets are Box and Grid with special functions for adding a child to windows and frames.Another big change is that there is no
gtk_dialog_runfunction so one would need to use aresponsecallback for possibly 140 dialogs but GtkDialog is on it's way also and being replaced by a GtkWindow.The migration document is here which shows what is likely to be involved.
I definitely have not got every thing I changed correct but it has enabled me to get a sort of working framework to test the changes and make further ones. There is still plenty to change, not least the
uiandgladefiles. As can be seen below, there is no toolbar as that is depreciated and I have removed that section from a couple ofuifiles and commented out any reference to it.Not sure about replacing it or maybe not, need to think about it more.
The other thing I am not sure about is the menu,
ALT+the top first letter works but not on the actual menu or theCtrl+entries. I think the latter may be fixed by the use of aGtkShortcutController.The other thing worth mentioning is that I am not using
GtkApplication, seeChange gtk_maincommit.The last 6 commits are to do with trying to get a handle on what is needed to have a working chart of accounts page as seen below, the height of the combo is not playing ball so that may need to be changed to a
GtkDropDown...One thing I would like to clarify is what version of Gtk4 are we aiming at, as stated above I am building against 4.8.3, 4.10.5 would be my next choice with more depreciated widgets and was released August last year, the latest version is 4.14.2