dbus-glib is a deprecated D-Bus library with some significant design
flaws, and is essentially unmaintained. I would like to minimize its
use, and eventually remove it from Debian. There will not be a
version that fixes its design flaws, because that would be a major
compatibility break, and any user of dbus-glib who is willing to port
their application to a newer, incompatible version should instead be
porting their application to a better D-Bus implementation such as
GDBus.

For most purposes, the recommended replacement for dbus-glib is the
GDBus family of APIs in GLib, found in <gio/gio.h>. This does not add
an additional dependency, because dbus-glib already depends on a
sufficiently new version of GLib. A porting guide is available in the
GLib documentation:
<https://developer.gnome.org/gio/stable/ch35.html>. Practical
examples of porting from dbus-glib to GDBus can be found in the git
history of most older GNOME applications.

Alternatives to GDBus, with different design emphasis and trade-offs,
include sd-bus (systemd's D-Bus implementation), QtDBus (Qt's D-Bus
API), and libdbus (the low-level reference D-Bus implementation).
Please contact the D-Bus mailing list <dbus at lists.freedesktop.org>
if you are unsure which D-Bus implementation is most suitable for a
particular package.

Some libraries expose dbus-glib as part of their API/ABI, in which
case removing the deprecated dependency requires breaking API/ABI
(telepathy-glib is a good example). For these libraries, maintainers
should talk to the dependent library's upstream developers about
whether the dependent library should break API/ABI and switch to
GDBus, or whether the dependent library should itself be deprecated.

In a few cases, the package uses the reference D-Bus library libdbus
for all D-Bus-related APIs, and only uses dbus-glib as a way to
connect libdbus to the GLib main loop: if the only functions
referenced from dbus-glib are dbus_connection_setup_with_g_main() and
dbus_server_setup_with_g_main(), then you are in this situation. The
recommended replacement in this case is to bundle the dbus-gmain
branch from the dbus-glib git repository, for example as a `git
subtree` or `git submodule`. For example, dbus-python's GLib
integration now works like this. See
<https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/dbus/dbus-glib/blob/dbus-gmain/README
.md> for more details.

Control: retitle -1 lxappearance: unnecessary Build-Depends on deprecated dbus-glib
Control: tags -1 + patch

It seems that lxappearance doesn't actually require dbus-glib, it just
has it in Build-Depends (presumably left over from a previous version
that actively used it).

I've confirmed that the attached patch does not affect the contents of
the binary packages. Please apply it during the forky cycle so that we
can make some progress towards removing dbus-glib.

Thanks,
     smcv

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
lxappearance, 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 955917@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Andrew Lee (李健秋) <ajqlee@debian.org> (supplier of updated lxappearance 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: Wed, 03 Sep 2025 17:47:04 +0200
Source: lxappearance
Binary: lxappearance lxappearance-dbgsym
Architecture: source amd64
Version: 0.6.4-2
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Debian LXDE Maintainers <team+lxde@tracker.debian.org>
Changed-By: Andrew Lee (李健秋) <ajqlee@debian.org>
Description:
 lxappearance - LXDE GTK+ theme switcher
Closes: 955917
Changes:
 lxappearance (0.6.4-2) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   [ Simon McVittie ]
   * d/control: Remove unused Build-Depends (Closes: #955917)
 .
   [ Andrew Lee (李健秋) ]
   * debian/copyright: fix FSF old address.
Checksums-Sha1:
 f58e5729305a44d81d2ae80c38ce3a871bdb155c 2088 lxappearance_0.6.4-2.dsc
 cafb58b430bc75b7fbbcf85f79d00f94466824b3 6296 lxappearance_0.6.4-2.debian.tar.xz
 31aa8ce8c8ccc106c33bcf5f277bf80a4c47eb70 47960 lxappearance-dbgsym_0.6.4-2_amd64.deb
 9c46ac5125c4874653054d3f277cd46387503ff3 15183 lxappearance_0.6.4-2_amd64.buildinfo
 7900ca39a36b89188d9b03d0b20326661c996204 82372 lxappearance_0.6.4-2_amd64.deb
Checksums-Sha256:
 44e5ac3c0ae51d76173acbc6150bd6bdeaf0523edc2c9944df18b6dbee5abee2 2088 lxappearance_0.6.4-2.dsc
 0d44cd86bab01bc2a79efd0900006afda51a5198dd62f9771ec95a75d5a38355 6296 lxappearance_0.6.4-2.debian.tar.xz
 28f4e0a265c9b1ac149e160e8d4bc2a6f0b41c5c58adb564a7719de4166c82a5 47960 lxappearance-dbgsym_0.6.4-2_amd64.deb
 21a62b7efb7285764bbdb6376e7a01abae1e728a040984e771ed9e546b6ad1e2 15183 lxappearance_0.6.4-2_amd64.buildinfo
 773c78957d0ed03397e6064d29cc91bca1060b371462e633a79bee09f7740669 82372 lxappearance_0.6.4-2_amd64.deb
Files:
 2a8308c4a74011b92a45be0f48733a22 2088 x11 optional lxappearance_0.6.4-2.dsc
 b7763d5baa42e3824321cb43b0751ca7 6296 x11 optional lxappearance_0.6.4-2.debian.tar.xz
 0c9dc3d337358ec3ce069dfe86d82e60 47960 debug optional lxappearance-dbgsym_0.6.4-2_amd64.deb
 1d3b7002cabb966e0ad7abf14a6a3942 15183 x11 optional lxappearance_0.6.4-2_amd64.buildinfo
 d45f21622a78ac00c7f596d1568919ac 82372 x11 optional lxappearance_0.6.4-2_amd64.deb
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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=RS4a
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----