Port GUIs from PyGTK/Gnome-2 to PyGobject/Gnome-3

[cylc]

Software is a moving target ... The latest PyGTK release is the last of the line. The release announcement says:

New users wishing to develop Python applications using GTK+ are
recommended to use the GObject-Introspection features available
in PyGObject. Existing authors of PyGTK applications are also
recommended to port their applications to PyGObject to take
advantage of new features appearing in GTK-3 and beyond.
More information on PyGObject and GObject-Introspection can
be found at http://live.gnome.org/PyGObject.
PyGTK-2.24 will be the final major release of PyGTK."

[m214089]

I did some lookup in the Web and it seems to be a good idea to do this change to prevent running into a dead-end on the long term. It seems to be no too difficult as there is some supporting tools for this. Nevertheless it'll take some time.

So, it would be good, to have this sometimes in the 'near' future.

[benfitzpatrick]

I think it'll be quite a while before we can assume people will have pygobject and GTK-3 - even though I already have it on my home machines.

It was also a little cheeky of them to recommend porting a year and a half ago, when the documentation is still a work in progress!

[matthewrmshin]

(Or move to another modern GUI technology?)

[hjoliver]

(Or move to another modern GUI technology?)

Any suggestions? I imagine that upgrading the existing GUI to pygobject and gtk-3 will be relatively easy, but making a completely new GUI that can compete with the current one would be a BIG job - we have invested a lot in it so far [update: I meant "in a short time", as we've long planned to move to RESTful http comms, which will open the door to other UI technologies].

[hjoliver]

(discussion of web UI technologies taken offline)

[hjoliver]

[meeting] we agreed:

• this is needed, e.g. to fix gcylc: large memory footprint in graph mode - possible leak? #1620
• but we can't do it until Pygobject (comes with Gnome3) is available on all distros that we need to support.

[hjoliver]

@cylc/core - extreme difficulty of installing PyGTK is frequently reported by those who don't have it available out of the box on their systems. Any updates on previous comment re going to PyGobject in the short term?

[matthewrmshin]

This issue should cover cylc gui, cylc gscan and cylc gpanel, so #570 is really a duplicate.

[hjoliver]

Haven't we more or less decided not to do this, and go straight (within the next year, maybe) to web tech?

[matthewrmshin]

Superseded by #1873.