Gerrit,
Regarding the update to GTK+ 2.8:
1) atk-1.10.3 has no new requirements and can be bumped immediately.
2) pango-1.10.3 needs cairo (now in the distro) for the new
libpangocairo-1.0, which is required for gtk+-2.8; with that, it can be
bumped immediately.
3) glib-2.8.6 passes all tests. The mainloop-test doesn't actually
hang; it does take a few minutes, but eventually passes.
4) gtk-2.8.x requires cairo and pango-1.10 with cairo. I haven't tried
building it yet.
Is there any way in which I can help?