GIMP Development

This site tries to provide useful information for developers:

  • If you are into resource creation, e.g. plug-in development, you should look at the Resource Development section.
  • If you wish to contribute to GIMP itself, you should read the Core Development section.

Note: for the main GIMP website, visit www.gimp.org instead; the GIMP manual is at docs.gimp.org.

GIMP 3.0 roadmap

Feature Status Comments
Port to GTK3 done (except minor API usage, but no major tasks anymore)
Port away from intltool done We are now full gettext
Port to meson build done Autotools was removed
Redesign API for scripts/plug-ins work in progress GObject Introspection introduced, along with refactoring, no wire protocol redesign in the end, big API improvements still worked on
Wayland support work in progress Various bugs still happen, especially in window management area (broken sizes and positions), color management…
Space invasion work in progress Various color management improvements, CMYK support (not as core image format, but import/export and picking/choosing/viewing)…
Multi-layer selection done Most code is multilayer aware…
Less “floating selection” nearly done Discussed on the gimp-gui mailing list, transform tools still create floating selections
Documentation work in progress Make sure documentation is up-to-date by release time
Automatic layer boundary management done #32 - auto-growing layers are part of gsoc 23 (#9314)
Support SwatchBooker file format for palettes and gradients done !843 (GIMP 3.0)
Layer effects done Initial limited implementation as !958: started as part of gsoc 23 (#9244)
Layer effects on layer groups done Initial limited implementation as !1376

See more roadmaps