I just released PyGTK 2.24, which will almost certainly be the last major PyGTK release. The future of Python on the GNOME platform is PyGObject + GObject Introspection. From my experience over the last few months porting a number of my projects, the future is bright.
In a cruel twist of irony, the state of PyGTK on Windows and Mac has never been better. The credit for the windows work (and some great documentation improvements this cycle) must go to Dieter Verfaillie
- Windows installer (homepage) (download)
- Mac improvements (all in one installer work) (bundling advice)
I hope that the new stack will reach the same level of capability on other platforms as GTK+ 2.24, but in the large scheme of things the renewed development excitement surrounding GTK+ 3.0 and GNOME 3 is excellent consolation.
As a user I would like to thank those developers before me for creating PyGTK. It was the first ‘pythonic’ UI toolkit for linux, and a pleasure to use. As the recent maintainer of PyGTK I would especially like to thank those recent developers who helped me, in particular Dieter Verfaillie who really pushed PyGTK over the line regarding Windows support, into the great state it is now.
I’ll leave you with some graphical statistics (generated using pepper) for the 12 year history of PyGTK. If planet strips the wordpress gallery then please click here.
update: To clarify a point raised in the comments, PyGTK will be maintained in the exact same was as the GTK+-2.0 series will be maintained. Bug fix releases will be made if necessary, but no new features will be added. If you want the new GTK+-3.0 features then you should use PyGObject + GObject Introspection.
The PyGTK code will not disappear from any servers, it will continue to be shipped in all distributions for the forseeable future, it will continue to work very well on windows, and many applications will continue to use it.
Hi,
I use pygtk sometimes, and I am very disappointed to here it won’t be maintained anymore.
I think this will also hurt many projects who use GTK outside of GNOME.
Unless I don”t understand it correctly and Gobject will be independent of GNOME.
Can you put some light on it ?
Thanks for the work done so far !
Oz
@Oz123: I updated the post with a little explanation.
I guess we have different meanings of the term ‘unmaintained’. Nevertheless sometimes we need to move on - the PyGObject + GObject Introspection is the future. In the interests of clarity and making things easy for new python developers wishing to write GNOME applications the simplest answer is ‘if you are writing a new python application then use PyGObject’.
I agree that we have terrible messaging. I think it is unfortunate that PyGObject was chosen for the name of the new GObject introspection stuff, it is very confusing for the thing (PyGObject) that used to be about just GObject to now be the recommended way to use GTK.
I encourage you to read the supplied links and to improve the explanations if you are unsure.
@John: Think you missed the question.
@Oz123: GObject-Introspection is a technology *used* by GNOME. You may use PyGObject everywhere you wish, with or without GNOME.
@Daniel, yeah I think I did too, partly. The two questions are related because of the (IMO) confusing naming.
The post needed clarification regarding the difference between unmaintained and abandoned anyway.