#967577 libglade2: depends on deprecated GTK 2

#967577#5
Date:
2020-08-04 10:51:49 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GTK 2 was superseded by GTK 3 in 2011 (see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

#967577#12
Date:
2020-08-04 13:34:16 UTC
From:
To:
Control: tags -1 + upstream wontfix

This package is dead upstream, so this bug won't be fixed.
The replacement is GtkBuilder, part of GTK.

Please leave this bug open (unless/until the package is removed), so we
can use it to track how many packages still depend on GTK 2.

Thanks,
    smcv

#967577#19
Date:
2023-10-20 21:46:00 UTC
From:
To:
I am raising the severity to important because I have just uploaded a NMU for #967874, which is the
last very popular reverse dependency of libglade2. It would be good to get rid of it in the trixie
release cycle even if the GTK 2 removal does not happen.

Please consider raising to severity serious.

#967577#26
Date:
2023-10-21 10:03:05 UTC
From:
To:
libglade2 depending on GTK2. If any libglade2 bug is going to have its
severity raised, it would be more appropriate to raise the severity of
#895517 "libglade2-0: deprecated and unmaintained upstream" and the bugs
that it depends on.

    smcv

#967577#33
Date:
2025-08-13 09:32:11 UTC
From:
To:
Dear submitter,

as the package libglade2 has just been removed from the Debian archive
unstable we hereby close the associated bug reports.  We are sorry
that we couldn't deal with your issue properly.

For details on the removal, please see https://bugs.debian.org/1110865

The version of this package that was in Debian prior to this removal
can still be found using https://snapshot.debian.org/.

Please note that the changes have been done on the master archive and
will not propagate to any mirrors until the next dinstall run at the
earliest.

This message was generated automatically; if you believe that there is
a problem with it please contact the archive administrators by mailing
ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Thorsten Alteholz (the ftpmaster behind the curtain)