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GTK 2 was superseded by GTK 3 in 2011 (see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

I'm not familiar with Java or OpenJFX, but suspect the GTK 2 build and runtime
dependencies might can be dropped. It looks like using GTK 3 instead of GTK 2
has been the default for a little while, so GTK 2 shouldn't be getting used
but the choice is made at runtime.

$ ldd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/jni/* | grep gtk
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/jni/libglassgtk2.so:
        libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
(0x00007f262e089000)
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/jni/libglassgtk3.so:
        libgtk-3.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-3.so.0
(0x00007f9bd9d9d000)

Since GTK 3 is getting used anyway there doesn't seem to be any use disabling
GTK 2 except for its own sake.

https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8198654
https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8229245

I feel like this would be easier to fix if we had a newer openjfx
version, but I got stuck trying that approach:
https://bugs.debian.org/1041527

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha

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

Do we have a fix for this? It seems we need to either re-write or drop
ClassicLadder.

OpenJFX dropped GTK 2 in the version 21:

https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8299595