#1148236 libwx-perl: depends on libwxgtk-webview3.2-dev which needs to be removed from s390x

Package:
libwx-perl
Source:
libwx-perl
Description:
interface to wxWidgets cross-platform GUI toolkit
Submitter:
Simon McVittie
Date:
2026-09-18 12:45:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#1148236#5
Date:
2026-09-18 09:49:48 UTC
From:
To:
As announced in
<https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/09/msg00139.html> and
<https://bugs.debian.org/1148038>, new upstream releases of WebKitGTK no
longer support big-endian architectures; but we cannot just stop
upgrading WebKitGTK, because it's security-sensitive on the
architectures where it remains.

One part of removing WebKitGTK from s390x (and the big-endian -ports
architectures) will be to remove libwxgtk-webview3.2-dev and
libwxgtk-webview3.2-1t64 from the affected architectures. However,
libwx-perl currently depends on those packages unconditionally, and will
become uninstallable if they are removed.

Ideally its Depends and Build-Depends should be reduced so they include
something like:

    libwxgtk-webview3.2-dev [!s390x !hppa !m68k !powerpc !ppc64 !sparc64]

so that the package can still be built on s390x, but with reduced
functionality. Is that feasible?

Can libwx-perl be configured to have partial functionality on s390x, so
that all current features except for the web view remain available?

Or, does libwx-perl work somewhat gracefully if the web view library is
missing, with non-webview-based applications like needrestart-session
working normally?

If a reduced-functionality build is not feasible and it's
all-or-nothing, then libalien-wxwidgets-perl and libwx-perl will have to
be removed from s390x completely, which will involve removing
significantly more packages.

It looks as though the only two packages that actually use Wx::WebView
are chordpro and eekboek, both Architecture: all. I think it's probably
acceptable for these two packages to regress on s390x, which is not a
desktop platform. Removing libwx-perl from s390x completely would have a
larger impact, including breaking the dependencies of unifont-bin, which
is required by debian-installer.

    smcv

#1148236#12
Date:
2026-09-18 10:24:49 UTC
From:
To:
If #1054278 in unifont can be fixed, then it looks as though it would be
sufficient to remove the binary packages built by:

* libalien-wxwidgets-perl
* libwx-glcanvas-perl
* libwx-perl
* libwx-scintilla-perl

from s390x. This would make chordpro, eekboek, kephra, libdemeter-perl,
libwx-glcanvas-perl, libwx-perl-datawalker-perl,
libwx-perl-processstream-perl and needrestart-session unbuildable or
uninstallable on s390x, but those packages can be ignored because
they're Architecture: all.

A preview of what we would have to ask the ftp team to do: