Similar to cinnamon itself (#1041646), cinnamon-screensaver contains
osk.py which imports typelibs from gir1.2-caribou-1.0.

This is part of caribou, an unmaintained on-screen keyboard from the
early history of GNOME 3, which never progressed beyond the experimental
stage.

cinnamon-screensaver uses caribou via Python and PyGI, so it should
be straightforward to make this dependency optional via a try:/except
ImportError: block, which would allow the dependency to be reduced to
a Suggests or nothing at all. GNOME Shell had similar handling for the
Telepathy framework for a while, although in JS rather than Python:
code to use it still existed, but it was runtime-optional.

The reason I'm raising this is that caribou was archived upstream
(#1041641) and depends on the unmaintained clutter-1.0 framework
(#1041623), so any bugs in it are not going to be fixed any more
unless someone (presumably from the cinnamon community) takes over the
responsibility for its upstream maintenance; and it's currently also
RC-buggy (FTBFS with gcc-14, #1074863). In the absence of an upstream
maintainer, I don't think caribou should be included in trixie.

Thanks,
    smcv

Control: severity -1 serious
...

There was no activity in this direction during the trixie cycle, so
caribou is still in trixie, but I do not think it should be included in
forky in its current unmaintained state.

Is this a code path that is developed/tested, or is it merely a leftover
from when Cinnamon forked from early versions of GNOME 3?

     smcv

In the version in testing/sid, caribou is already optional, so the
dependency can just be dropped.

Il 05/05/2026 11:10, Bastian Germann ha scritto:
Hi, I prefer to wait for the next version with the new screensaver that
will use the new integrated on-screen keyboard.
If I disable it now, it will make it unusable for some users who need
it. If I do it with the next version, at least the new screensaver will
be there by default, and this would only be a fallback, so not having
the on-screen keyboard on the fallback will be more acceptable.

Please find a patch attached. I might upload this as NMU after a while.

Il 05/05/2026 11:50, Bastian Germann ha scritto:

Sorry again, but I don't think it's a good idea to cause serious
problems for some users, even if it's “just” Debian unstable/testing and
its derivatives in certain cases like these:
- touchscreen devices
- some users with disabilities who rely on accessibility tools
- users with a broken keyboard who don't have a spare one available

Is there any critical reason why it needs to be removed immediately,
rather than waiting half year for the new cinnamon version with the new
screensaver and the new built-in on-screen keyboard?

No, there is none. I had not read your answer before posting the patch.

I did not know that there is development on a new on-screen-keyboard.

Il 07/05/2026 12:37, Bastian Germann ha scritto:
New on-screen-keyboard was added in cinnamon 6.6 but the old screensaver
can't use it, next cinnamon version in development have the new
screensaver integrated in cinnamon and using the new on-screen-keyboard
and this old will be used only as fallback, so can be more acceptable
not have the on-screen-keyboard on the fallback.

I suggest to reconsider this and apply my patch to keep this package in
testing.

Il 21/07/2026 14:55, Bastian Germann ha scritto:

I'm afraid I'll have to do that and will warn users with "temporary"
debian/NEWS that there will be no more on-screen keyboard on the
screensaver until cinnamon 6.8

However, I will try to answer the other RCs of the deps with RC as well
to have a few more days of time and review this thing better more calmly