The Vim text editor, known for its longevity and resistance to change, has taken a step forward in its graphical version gVim. Following a pull request submitted earlier this year, the main codebase has merged support for GTK4. This update adds to the existing GTK2 and GTK3 support, allowing users to enjoy more modern performance and improved integration with current desktop environments.
Technical details of the GTK4 integration 🛠️
The implementation required several weeks of work to adapt the gVim interface to the new GTK4 APIs, which remove obsolete widgets and optimize window drawing. Developers rewrote sections of the rendering code to take advantage of GTK4's signal cascade system, improving visual response. Although the change does not introduce spectacular features, it does ensure compatibility with the latest Linux graphics libraries, avoiding dependency issues that affected users of modern distributions.
Vim catches up, but without rushing 🐢
An editor born in the 70s adopting GTK4 is like watching your grandfather learn to use a touchscreen phone: he does it well, but at his own pace. While other editors race towards the future, Vim arrives with the calm of someone who knows many still use it in an 80-column terminal. Of course, now purists can argue whether GTK3 was better, while the rest of us keep using :wq regardless of the version.