This package has Build-Depends on GTK 2 (libgtk2.0-dev), or produces
binary packages with a Depends on GTK 2.

GTK 2 was superseded by GTK 3 in 2011 (see
<https://bugs.debian.org/947713>). It no longer receives any significant
upstream maintenance, and in particular does not get feature development
for new features like UI scaling on high-pixel-density displays (HiDPI)
and native Wayland support. GTK 3 is in maintenance mode and GTK 4 is
approaching release, so it seems like a good time to be thinking about
minimizing the amount of GTK 2 in the archive.

GTK 2 is used by some important productivity applications like GIMP, and
has also historically been a popular UI toolkit for proprietary software
that we can't change, so perhaps removing GTK 2 from Debian will never be
feasible. However, it has reached the point where a dependency on it is
a bug - not a release-critical bug, and not a bug that can necessarily
be fixed quickly, but a piece of technical debt that maintainers should
be aware of.

A porting guide is provided in the GTK 3 documentation:
https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/migrating.html

Some libraries (for example libgtkspell0) expose GTK as part of their
API/ABI, in which case removing the deprecated dependency requires
breaking API/ABI. For these libraries, in many cases there will already
be a corresponding GTK 3 version (for example libgtkspell3-3-0), in which
case the GTK 2-based library should probably be deprecated or removed
itself. If there is no GTK 3 equivalent, of a GTK 2-based library,
maintainers should talk to the dependent library's upstream developers
about whether the dependent library should break API/ABI and switch
to GTK 3, or whether the dependent library should itself be deprecated
or removed.

A few packages extend GTK 2 by providing plugins (theme engines, input
methods, etc.) or themes, for example ibus and mate-themes. If these
packages deliberately support GTK 2 even though it is deprecated, and
they also support GTK 3, then it is appropriate to mark this mass-filed
bug as wontfix for now. I have tried to exclude these packages from
the mass-bug-filing, but I probably missed some of them.

Regards,
    smcv

Hi,

your package bfm came up as a candidate for the Bug of the Day[1] and so
I had a look into this package.  The Bug of the Day project intends to
demonstrate newcomers how bugs can be closed and in principle bfm would
be a good target with a bug tagged patch.  However, before doing so I'd
like to hear your opinion whether working on this package is
sustainable.  Bug #967271 "depends on deprecated GTK 2" might mean that
we can't keep this package in Debian in the long run.  So first I want
to know whether you are happy if we:

   1. Move the package to https://salsa.debian.org/debian/bfm
   2. Fix the bugs in CC to this mail
   3. Upgrade the packaging to latest packaging standards
      (debhelper compat level, Standards-Version, lintian-brush)

If you are happy about this and consider it helpful for the next couple
of years please let me know and I would NMU the result of this work or
leave it for your inspection to do a maintainer upload.  Otherwise I
could consider filing a RoM bug report to remove the package from
Debian.

Kind regards
    Andreas.

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/tille/tiny_qa_tools/-/wikis/Tiny-QA-tasks#bug-of-the-day

Hi

I'll leave this question to Mika. I have no memory of being involved in
this package. I guess I have acted as uploader at some point, but I have
clue when.

Cheers

// Ola

Hi Ola,

Am Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 09:27:20PM +0100 schrieb Ola Lundqvist:

I think it makes sense to wait until 2025-03-18 for an answer from Mika
(=21 days in total) before uploading as NMU to delayed=10.

Kind regards
    Andreas.

Hi Andreas,

Thank you for this note!

Yes, I would be happy to participate and either have changes made as an
NMU or to have them uploaded as patches for you to review and upload.

Best,

Mika

Hi Mika,

Am Wed, Mar 12, 2025 at 08:17:00AM +0900 schrieb Mika Matsuzaki:

You are welcome.

I've just did a Debian team upload.  I did a debdiff against the current
package which showed no diff.

I intenced to add you to the
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/bfm
repository but I can't find your Salsa login.  Please let me know to enable
push permissions to this repository.

Thank you for confirming the upload
    Andreas.

As announced [1], we are trying to remove gtk2 from forky. Therefore,
I am raising the severity of this issue.

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/01/msg00090.html

On behalf of the Debian GNOME team,
Jeremy Bícha