Move to GTK+ version 3

[coreycb]

Fixes #106

[asweigart]

This change seems to break Python 2's use of pyperclip. For Python 2 I would run apt-get install python-gtk2-dev to get the gtk module, but this change seems like it would break that. I can run import gi just fine from Python 3 on Ubuntu, but import gi doesn't work for Python 2.

What's the solution that doesn't break backwards compatibility? Is backwards compatibility important here?

[tleonhardt]

I would say that pyperclip working both with Python 2 and Python 3 is still essential at this point. Maybe in another year Python 2 support for new releases won't matter. But I know at this point I still have a lot of cmd2 end users who are still using Python 2. (I think they are nuts, but that is beside the point)

[coreycb]

Are you able to apt install python-gi? That should get you py2 support. python3-gi should also be available for py3.

[tleonhardt]

The python-gi package exists in apt repos for Ubuntu 17.10, Ubuntu 16.04, Debian 9, and Debian 8 (all of the Linux VMs I had on hand to verify).

@coreycb
Just curious, is there an equivalent package which can be installed via pip?

[coreycb]

@tleonhardt I just checked and python-pi is available back to 12.04 for Ubuntu and looks to be available back to Debian 7. I'm not sure if there is a pip installable package. I didn't see one in my searches.

[asweigart]

I was just wondering if there was a way to still support people who have the older gtk module and not gi. Maybe we should add a init_gi_clipboard() instead of replacing the current init_gtk_clipboard(). If there's an incompatibility issue, how about we attempt to import gi first, and if that fails, then try to import gtk?

I'm not familiar with gtk on Linux. Does this make sense? Or do we have to necessarily get rid of the import gtk stuff?

[coreycb]

I'm ok with a fallback mode. And as you said, if we did that I'd prefer importing gi first and falling back to gtk, because the import of gtk is why cmd2 and pyperclip currently fail when using interactive mode in Ubuntu. The gtk2 and gtk3 modules conflict.

I'm not sure if you need to maintain backward compatability though on major releases of a project though, but I am not the maintainer.

[coreycb]

Note: You may also need libgtk-3-dev installed.

[coreycb]

@asweigart I've made some updates to fall back to gtk if gi is not available.

[coreycb]

@asweigart does this patch look ok to you? I really want to get this into ubuntu but would like it to land upstream here first.

[tleonhardt]

@asweigart Al, if you are busy, I'd be willing to help maintain pyperclip.

[sdelafond]

Any news on this one ? An up-to-date patch is at https://github.com/sdelafond/pyperclip/blob/debian/master/debian/patches/move-to-gtk3.patch, just in case .

[asweigart]

Closing this. Thanks for your contributions and I'm sorry this slipped past my attention. I finally have some time to sort through the issues and PRs for pyperclip. I'll be adding you to the authors document so you can get recognition for your contribution.