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</style></head><body><div>Hi Michalis,</div><div><br></div><div>On Mon, 2026-02-09 at 03:03 +0000, Michalis Kamburelis wrote:</div><div>...</div><blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>In Castle Game Engine, GTK 2 is used in 2 ways:<br></div><div><br></div><div>1. As a backend of our TCastleWindow. This was solved on our (upstream) side -- we introduced now a new backend CASTLE_WINDOW_GTK_3 and it's now default on Linux and FreeBSD. So all applications using TCastleWindow can be compiled to use GTK 2 instead of 3.<br></div><div><br></div><div> More information on <a href="https://castle-engine.io/wp/2026/02/09/upgrade-to-gtk-3/">https://castle-engine.io/wp/2026/02/09/upgrade-to-gtk-3/</a> .<br></div><div><br></div><div> So this should be solved once we (upstream) release new engine version (we plan to do it this month, February 2026) and Debian updates to it.<br></div></blockquote><div>Now we have <i><b>fp-units-gtk3</b></i> on debian, so maybe you can use them?</div><blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><br></div><div>2. Another usage is through using LCL, this affects our editor (castle-editor) application. The editor doesn't use TCastleWindow, it uses Lazarus LCL + TCastleControl component. There are a few solutions to this usage:<br></div><div><br></div><div>2.1. In short, for Debian packaging, as a simplest solution we recommend to use LCL Qt5 widgetset for castle-editor.<br></div><div><br></div><div> We did some fixes around TCastleControl + Qt5 widgetset in the past, and it should work nicely.<br></div><div><br></div><div> Note that this is *not* what we will do as an upstream, in our releases on <a href="https://castle-engine.io/download">https://castle-engine.io/download</a> . Using Qt5 widgetset would be risky for us, as it has to rely on libqt5pas, which changes API from time to time, and distributing a binary castle-editor that links to incompatible libqtpas would just crash on users. This will change once we use Snap / Flatpak for Linux releases (then we can package engine + proper libqtpas) but for current releases it would be bad. Anyhow, this problem doesn't concern Debian, where you can just make sure that libqt5pas and castle-editor are compatible, since you ship them both.<br></div><div><br></div><div>2.2. We could rely on Lazarus GTK 3 widgetset.<br></div><div><br></div><div> It is unfortunately still not stable enough for us. Even testing with latest Lazarus "main", where "gtk3" is no longer marked "alpha". I mentioned details on <a href="https://castle-engine.io/wp/2026/02/09/upgrade-to-gtk-3/">https://castle-engine.io/wp/2026/02/09/upgrade-to-gtk-3/</a> .<br></div><div><br></div><div> I want to work on this, and once done -> this can be a solution for both upstream and Debian packaging. But it may not be immediate.<br></div></blockquote><div>Maybe with new version of Lazarus you can do this easier. Please note that Lazarus itself is not really usable with GTK3 WS, but many applications will run just fine.</div><div><br></div><div>According to some upstream tickets, we may expect Lazarus 5.0 by end of year.</div><blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><br></div><div>2.3. There is also, but this is a more distant future, possibility to have castle-editor version that doesn't use LCL, and only uses TCastleWindow. So then our engine editor is also a "more typical" application using our engine. I actually started to play with this idea in the past, it's called castle-editor-portable, <a href="https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine/tree/master/tools/castle-editor-portable">https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine/tree/master/tools/castle-editor-portable</a> . But this needs a lot of work to be really "production" usage at this point.</div></blockquote><div><span><pre>-- <br></pre><pre>Cheers,
Abou Al Montacir
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