Developers of the sound editor Ardour recently made significant changes to the code base, specifically regarding the support for assembly with the GTK2 library. They removed the support for GTK2 and now only allow the use of ytk, which is a GTK2 Fork created by the Ardour project in February 2024. The decision to stop assembly with GTK2 was made in order to enhance the functionality of ytk, which includes support for input sensory devices and the ability to draw on the MacOS platform.
Initially, ytk was simply a copy of GTK2 integrated into the Ardour repository for convenience. The changes made to the code base mostly involved fixing errors and removing unused features. Previously, ytk was only used in distributions that no longer supported GTK2, while the default assembly still used GTK2.
In February, the default assembly scenarios in the experimental branch of Ardour, which will lead to the release of Ardour 9.0, were switched to ytk. Recently, the support for GTK2 was completely removed. Similar to GTK2, ytk only works with the X11 protocol and requires XWayland for operation in a Wayland-based environment.