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=Porting an exisiting activity to GTK3=
In this guide we will handle the porting of the an existing activity from using GTK2 to use GTK3. Furthermore we will show you what changes you need to do to make usage of the new sugar toolkit that uses now GTK3 as well. In this guide we will use the [http://git.sugarlabs.org/hello-world hello-world] activity as a simple example.
==Preparation==
Before you start porting your activity you are encouraged to branch off a stable branch. This will allow you to keep on doing stable releases on the stable branch and new releases on the master branch.
The latest release was version 3. We highly recommend that you use the 'sugar-0.94' as the stable branch name because this will keep the repositories consistent and eases the development work. In git you can create a branch like this:
<pre>
git branch sugar-0.94
</pre>
This has created a local branch. You can show the result by running 'git branch', you should see the following:
<pre>
[erikos@T61 helloworld]$ git branch
* master
sugar-0.94
</pre>
The 'sugar-0.94' branch is only locally available so far which can be seen by running 'git branch -r' which shows the remote branches:
<pre>
[erikos@T61 helloworld]$ git branch -r
origin/HEAD -> origin/master
origin/master
origin/sucrose-0.84
</pre>
The only branch available besides the master branch is the 'sucrose-0.84' branch. Let's push now our new branch to the remote repository to make it available for others:
<pre>
git push origin sugar-0.94
</pre>
The branch is now listed as a remote branch. You can verify as well on your [http://git.sugarlabs.org/hello-world/mainline gitorious page].
<pre>
[erikos@T61 helloworld]$ git branch -r
origin/HEAD -> origin/master
origin/master
origin/sucrose-0.84
origin/sugar-0.94
</pre>
You can switch now between those branches using 'git checkout <branch>'. And you can use 'git branch' to see which branch you are on (the one with the * before is the branch you are currently on).
<pre>
git checkout sugar-0.94
git checkout master
</pre>
==Cleanup, adopt to API changes in the sugar-toolkit==
''This should be done only on the master branch''! In the new sugar-toolkit we have removed old API, you should adjust your activity accordingly:
* the keep button has been removed completely
* the old-style toolbar has been removed
==Port the activity from GTK-2 to GTK-3==
The first thing that changes is the importing instruction for GTK,
<pre>import gtk</pre>
has to be replaced by
<pre>from gi.repository import Gtk</pre>
Then you have to change each call that involves Gtk, for example creating a button will look now like this:
<pre>button = Gtk.Button()</pre>
A simple hello world program in GTK-3 does look like this:
<pre>
from gi.repository import Gtk
def _destroy_cb(widget, data=None):
Gtk.main_quit()
w = Gtk.Window()
w.connect("destroy", _destroy_cb)
label = Gtk.Label('Hello World!')
w.add(label)
w.show_all()
Gtk.main()
</pre>
For porting your activity you do have to change your calls for accesing widgets and services in the new GTK3 sugar-toolkit as well. The new namespace is called sugar3, trying to reflect that GTK3 is the underlying technology. For example the import of the base activity class has to be changed from
<pre>from sugar.activity import activity</pre>
to
<pre>from sugar3.activity import activity</pre>
The changes that were needed to port the hello-world activity can be seen in [http://git.sugarlabs.org/hello-world/mainline/commit/508e1c518b56cbde5508e560c8a2ff38a3518583 this commit].
Ok, let's do these changes now for your activity. Make sure you are in your master branch using the 'git branch' command (the master branch should have a '*' before it). Make your changes, commit them ('git commit -a') and push them to the remote repository ('git push origin master').
==Make a release==
===Versioning===
If you do new releases the versioning of the GTK2 and GTK3 release should be different. For GTK2 releases you should use dotted versions for new development releases major versions. Let's have a look at hello-world as an example. The latest release of hello-world was version 3. Bug fix releases should be named 3.1 then 3.2 and so on. The new releases for the new development branch should be starting with a major number, in this case 4.
==For merging==
To port PyGTK to PyGI, read this: https://live.gnome.org/PyGObject/IntrospectionPorting (especially the section abouut pygi-convert.sh)
To port PyGTK to PyGI, read this: https://live.gnome.org/PyGObject/IntrospectionPorting (especially the section abouut pygi-convert.sh)