Apparent impass between GTK+ and Ubuntu on Wayland backend

[David Herrmann]

Hi Pekka

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 8:37 AM, Pekka Paalanen <ppaalanen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Jan 2013 01:13:31 -0500
> darxus at chaosreigns.com wrote:
>
>> Ubuntu said they're not willing to have their GTK+ package depend on a
>> Wayland package (when using GTK+ only with X), requesting the Wayland
>> backend be moved out to a dynamically loadable library:
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk+3.0/+bug/954352
>> (Comment 61 on.)
>>
>> GTK+ said "No":  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=690381
>>
>>
>> How should this work in major binary package based distros?
>>
>
> The lauchpad bug pretty much seems to say, that Ubuntu cannot have GTK+
> depend on libwayland, because Wayland conflicts with proprietary
> drivers. Did I understand that right? I didn't find any other
> explanation there.
>
> I wonder if they realize, that libwayland and xkbcommon have absolutely
> nothing to do with any graphics drivers. There is no reason to make
> libwayland conflict with any proprietary or other driver, so I'm
> confused why they say that Wayland conflicts with them.
>
> The two other reasons I can guess why they don't want to enable Wayland
> are:
> - If enabling Wayland for GTK+ requires the wayland-egl API from libEGL;
>   does it? If it does, then that would conflict with proprietary
>   drivers, if it causes a runtime linking failure.
> - They really do not want apps to indirectly link to two more libraries
>   at runtime for no use.

Exactly. They don't want two more libraries that are unconditionally
linked but only used by <1% of the users. Hence, they prefer an
approach where they install libwayland/libxkbcommon only if the user
wants them.

I think they are aware that both libraries are pretty small. I also
think this is less a technical reason but they rather don't want to
force wayland if it isn't used.

Regards
David