unifont-bin depends on libwx-perl, which as mentioned in #1054146 is
unmaintained upstream and only minimally maintained in Debian.

debian-installer build-depends on unifont-bin, which brings libwx-perl
into the critical path for being able to build d-i.

Scott Talbert wrote:

As far as I can see, removing the unifont-viewer GUI tool (and its man
page, etc.) would be enough to be able to drop the libwx-perl dependency.
I suspect that unifont-viewer is not considered to be core functionality
for unifont-bin?

    smcv

Hi,

 Okay.
 Isn't it enough to split unifont-viewer from unifont-bin, then?

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Control: severity -1 important
Control: block 1148038 by -1

This is now a practical problem again because libwx-perl depends on
libwxgtk-webview3.2-1t64, which needs to be removed from s390x and other
big-endian architectures as a result of WebKitGTK dropping the ability
to run on big-endian platforms (<https://bugs.debian.org/1148038>).

unifont-bin doesn't use Wx::WebView itself, but libwx-perl is a single
package providing bindings for all functionality of wxwidgets, including
the web view, so it might not be straightforward to separate.

libwx-perl also has an unrelated RC bug, <https://bugs.debian.org/1133539>.
want to run it? What is it useful for?

If it's sufficiently useful to justify the addition of a new binary
package, then the new binary package will need to be either
Architecture: all (and only installable on little-endian systems), or
only built on little-endian architectures.

Or perhaps the Depends: libwx-perl could be dropped to a Suggests, if we
expect that users of unifont-bin (which seem to be mainly
build-dependencies for packages like console-setup and debian-installer)
will only rarely run unifont-viewer?

Or, if unifont-viewer is only rarely useful, it could be removed from
the binary package completely. It looks as though it would probably
still be possible to unpack the source package and run it from there, if
it becomes useful during development.

     smcv

It doesn't seem to be referenced by any other packages, and it seems to
be a GUI in the style of "character map" programs that displays a font
in the .hex format shipped by unifont. This looks like something that
could be useful to unifont contributors/developers, but not very useful
for ordinary users or for e.g. d-i developers.

How about moving it so it's installed as an example rather than a
production executable, and reducing its Depends to Suggests, like the
attached patch?

This would take the RC-buggy/unmaintained libwx-perl out of
debian-installer's recursive dependencies, and I believe it would no
longer be a key package as a result.

     smcv

Control: severity -1 serious

That looks reasonable.

fwiw I'm bumping the severity of this to RC since this is one of the blockers
for the webkit2gtk new version, which is security sensitive.

Regards,
Emilio

Hi,

Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> wrote (Thu, 24 Sep 2026 14:44:52 +0100):

What to do with the manpage [1] then?
Should that be removed as well?


Holger


[1] https://manpages.debian.org/trixie/unifont-bin/unifont-viewer.1.en.html

I don't know - maybe? In the patch I proposed, I went for the minimal
change of just moving the executable out of the way, leaving its man
page available to the man(1) command. If maintainers would prefer to
move the man page as well (untested additional patch below) then that
would also be fine of course.

Thanks,
     smcv

diff --git a/debian/rules b/debian/rules
index 2bb8298..a1f0251 100755
--- a/debian/rules
+++ b/debian/rules
@@ -33,6 +33,7 @@ override_dh_auto_install-arch:
         dh_auto_install --builddirectory=src -- PREFIX='$$(DESTDIR)/usr'
         dh_auto_install --builddirectory=man -- PREFIX='$$(DESTDIR)/usr'
         rm -f debian/tmp/usr/bin/unifont-viewer
+       rm -f debian/tmp/usr/share/man/man1/unifont-viewer.1*

  #
  # Exclude ChangeLog until dh_installchangelogs is updated,
diff --git a/debian/unifont-bin.examples b/debian/unifont-bin.examples
index b02da63..9576c61 100644
--- a/debian/unifont-bin.examples
+++ b/debian/unifont-bin.examples
@@ -1 +1,2 @@
+man/unifont-viewer.1
  src/unifont-viewer

Hi,

Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> wrote (Sat, 26 Sep 2026 23:44:57 +0100):

I guess it would be good to remove that, instead of keeping a stale
manpage around, for which the binary is no longer available (at least
not on the usual way of execution).


Holger

Hi,

And thanks everyone for picking up this thread again…

Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> (2026-09-26):

Moving it aside as well for consistency looks like a good idea.

I certainly do appreciate the cautious approach. :-)

Both patches (the initial one, amended or not with the extra hunks) do
lead to having both unifont-viewer and its manpage (compressed as .1gz,
hence the wildcard, if anyone else wonders) to the examples directory,
but they don't always move that pair out of standard paths…

Building with -B (arch: any), that does work, and that should be
sufficient on buildds. Building with -b (arch: any and arch: all)
doesn't, because of the -arch/-indep split for the dh_auto_install
override.

What about leaving both dh_auto_install overrides alone, and moving the
removals to right before dh_install instead?

I'm attaching a patch that combines everything you've submitted so far,
and that uses execute_before_dh_install to implement this approach. This
seems to have the desired effect under pbuilder, with or without
`--debbuildopts=-B`.

(I'm also happy to submit a patch that uses plain override_dh_install
instead of execute_before_dh_install if that's preferred.)

Contents-wise:

    Files in second .deb but not in first
    -------------------------------------
    -rw-r--r--  root/root   /usr/share/doc/unifont-bin/examples/unifont-viewer.1
    -rwxr-xr-x  root/root   /usr/share/doc/unifont-bin/examples/unifont-viewer

    Files in first .deb but not in second
    -------------------------------------
    -rw-r--r--  root/root   /usr/share/man/man1/unifont-viewer.1.gz
    -rwxr-xr-x  root/root   /usr/bin/unifont-viewer

Metadata-wise:

 - libc6 versioned dependency gets bumped (it's been a while since the
   last upload/build);
 - libwx-perl demoted from Depends to Suggests.

So that would look good to me?


Cheers,

Hmm, I'm surprised that a dh_auto_install-arch override isn't run when
building both "arch" and "indep" packages together - I'd have expected
it to run both the -arch and -indep overrides, if any? But if that isn't
the case, your solution seems good.

(Some of my packages have both override_dh_auto_test-arch and
override_dh_auto_test-indep, and those do both run during debuild -b.
But perhaps this is a build{,-arch,-indep} vs. binary{,-arch,-indep}
difference?)

Your amended version of my patch looks good to me. Thanks!

     smcv

Hi,

Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> (2026-09-27):

I almost included more information in my previous mail but decided
against it because it felt way too long already.

With the current, unpatched package, the following happens:

 - One arch call that triggers the existing override:

       debian/rules override_dh_auto_install-arch

This leads to running dh_auto_install twice, as specified in that
override:

    dh_auto_install --builddirectory=src -- PREFIX='$(DESTDIR)/usr'
    dh_auto_install --builddirectory=man -- PREFIX='$(DESTDIR)/usr'

Removals of unifont-viewer files would happen here (and be confirmed,
e.g. `rm -f -v` would report files existing and going away).

 - One “indep” call that doesn't trigger any override (there's no
   override_dh_auto_install-indep), which is expressed through an
   exclusion of the only arch: any package (unifont-bin), via a now
   third dh_auto_install call:

       dh_auto_install -Nunifont-bin

At that point, unifont-viewer files are put back into place again (`rm
-f -v` would again confirm they exist and they are removed, now twice),
which explains why the combination of both your patches wouldn't be
sufficient.

Since I wasn't entirely sure my understanding was correct, I ran a test
with an extra `override_dh_auto_install-indep`, which confirmed that it
would trigger in a similar fashion as the existing `-arch` version
quoted above:

       debian/rules override_dh_auto_install-indep

Thanks for the review!

Hideki-san, are you happy to include this patch in your next upload? Or
I can take of uploading the package if you would like me to.


Cheers,

I've prepared an NMU for unifont (versioned as 1:16.0.04-1.1) and
uploaded it to DELAYED/2, to unblock cleanup of libwx-perl on s390x.

debdiff attached, also available here:
https://salsa.debian.org/fonts-team/unifont/-/merge_requests/1

Thanks,
     smcv

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
unifont, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 1054278@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> (supplier of updated unifont package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2026 19:44:20 +0100
Source: unifont
Architecture: source
Version: 1:16.0.04-1.1
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Debian Fonts Task Force <debian-fonts@lists.debian.org>
Changed-By: Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>
Closes: 1054278
Changes:
 unifont (1:16.0.04-1.1) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   * Non-maintainer upload
 .
   [ Hideki Yamane ]
   * Note in patches to forwarded to upstream
 .
   [ Simon McVittie, Cyril Brulebois ]
   * d/rules, d/unifont-bin.examples: Only install unifont-viewer as
     an example.
     This allows libwx-perl to be downgraded from Depends to Suggests,
     so that it will no longer be a key package, and indirectly unblocks
     a new version of webkit2gtk. (Closes: #1054278)
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