Re: Why I hate Gtk+/GNOME (from the perspective of an Ada supporter)

[Brian Drummond <brian_drummond@btconnect.com>]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 03:04:14 -0800 (PST), Ludovic Brenta
<ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote:

>The one thing I'm wondering is why you guys want to rebuild GTK+ in
>the first place? Are there no suitable prebuilt binaries anywhere so
>you can concentrate on GtkAda?

Speaking as a user who tried GTKada about six months ago...

I had a little time between projects to evaluate Ada for future development; the
language was attractive, GTKada looked attractive for cross-platform GUI
development, and the "testgtk" demo package built easily (on Windows).

(Downloads from libre : Gnat 2007, GTKada for Windows from Gnat 2006. 
OS : Win2000 SP4)

BUT... there are so many ways to crash TestGTK (on Windows 2000) just by
pressing buttons. It may be rock solid on Linux but I have my doubts...
Some of the bugs were easy to find and fix at the Ada level, which was actually
reassuring; the demo thus (accidentally, I presume!) illustrated how Ada really
does help to promote reliable programs.

Other bugs however were quickly traced into the C level stuff, which disappered
into the GTK library. These were pretty fundamental bugs ; massive memory leaks
and crashes.

For example, in the "Plot 3D" demo, pressing the "Rotate" buttons had three
unexpected effects on my system; both with the pre-built "Testgtk" executable
and my build. 
(1) Some of the buttons disappear : not very serious, probably fixable within
Ada. (not attempted; I'd probably have had to understand the signalling model to
tell the buttons to redraw themselves)
(2) About 300K memory leak for each press of a Rotate button..
(3) The 32nd press exited the program with a PROGRAM ERROR : Exception Access
Violation which the stack trace suggested came from below the GTK interface.

To deal with them any further I would have had to find the GTK 2.8.0 sources,
and learn to build that on Windows.(Unfortunately, other work then intervened,
as it does)

So I concluded, albeit without having got very far into the evaluation:

There are no suitable prebuilt binaries anywhere (I can find at least) so
I could concentrate on GtkAda.

- Brian