Subject: Re: [PATCH wip-gnome v4 3/8] gnu: gtkmm: Add missing native-input and correct propagated-inputs

From: Mark H Weaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2021 13:26:10 -0400

Hi Raghav,

Version 4 of your patch set mostly looks good to me, but I have one
concern about patch 3 (gnu: gtkmm: Add missing native-input and correct
propagated-inputs).

That patch modifies the 'propagated-inputs' field of 'gtkmm' to refer to
specific versions of packages: 'atkmm-2.28', 'cairomm-1.13', and
'pangomm-2.42'.  These references to specific versions are not ideal,
because:

(1) They will likely lead to conflicts within profiles.  For example, a
profile that includes both 'gtkmm' and 'cairomm' may fail to build,
because it would require including both 'cairomm' and 'cairomm-1.13',
and

(2) We might forget to update these references in the future.

It would be good to avoid these version-specific references, if
possible.  Can you help me understand the rationale?  Did you find that
there is an incompatibility between the latest stable versions of
'gtkmm', 'atkmm', 'cairomm', and 'pangomm'?  If so, could you help me
understand the nature of that incompatibility?  Perhaps it can be
addressed in another way.

If it turns out that these versioned references are truly unavoidable,
it would be good to add comments next to those references, briefly
explaining the rationale.

Thanks very much for your work on this, Raghav.

     Regards,
       Mark

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