#967404 gjiten: depends on deprecated GTK 2

#967404#5
Date:
2020-08-04 10:41:31 UTC
From:
To:
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GTK 2 was superseded by GTK 3 in 2011 (see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

#967404#12
Date:
2022-06-29 20:40:53 UTC
From:
To:

#967404#17
Date:
2022-06-30 14:41:58 UTC
From:
To:
Hello Jeremy,

Could you explain your message a little more?
Does that mean the bug is fixed with version 3.1-1?
I also couldn't find your comment on the bug report page: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=967404;msg=2

I'm really concerned about Gjiten, so I try to stay up to date about the current status.


Regards
Chris / DarkTrick

#967404#22
Date:
2022-06-30 20:36:23 UTC
From:
To:

#967404#27
Date:
2022-06-30 20:40:01 UTC
From:
To:
Yes, gjiten now longer uses GTK2 in Debian.

I meant to close the bug with my previous email but I got the syntax
slightly wrong. Debian's bugtracker is a bit old-fashioned.

It's there if you remove the ";msg=2" suffix. Note that it's easy to
receive the email a few minutes before the website is updated.

Thank you,
Jeremy Bicha