Jul 16 – 21, 2026
Europe/Madrid timezone

Lessons from the field: Experience migrating a large commercial application from Win32 to GTK 4

Jul 16, 2026, 3:05 PM
40m
40 Minute Presentation - In Person Application Development and Deployment

Description

For the last few years, I’ve been a part of a small team working on an ambitious project: migrating a large and complex commercial application from Windows to desktop Linux using GTK 4. The application was originally developed over several decades using Win32 and MFC, and its architecture was deeply tied to the Windows message loop, windowing model, and platform APIs. It implemented multiple complex custom controls, its own layout system based on constraints, and embedded a custom scripting engine.

The port to GTK 4 has been successfully completed, and the product shipped. Today, this is one of the largest and most complex GTK applications ever written.

In this talk, I'll share the practical lessons from this project, the challenges we faced and how we worked around them, which parts of GTK worked well for this project, and what improvements could be made on the GTK side.

Author(s) Bio

Sergey Bugaev is a software engineer with a passion for systems programming. In the GNOME space, he’s known for his contributions to GTK, particularly the layout system, and for creating peel, the modern C++ bindings for GTK and other GObject libraries. When not hacking on GTK or Vala, he might be running, or dancing, or binge-watching another TV series.

Presentation Type In Person
Photo usage consent Yes

Author

Sergey Bugaev

Presentation materials