[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#967514: gwyddion: depends on deprecated GTK 2

[David Nečas (Yeti)]

On Sun, Dec 04, 2022 at 01:06:51PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> according to upstream in a previous bug report[1]:
> 
>    There is no way to port to GTK+3 without breaking backward
>    compatibility.  We value backward compatibility.
> 
> I keep upstream in CC to inform them that while the previous situation
> was not yet a reason to remove gwyddion since we found a workaround but
> sooner or later GTK 2 will be removed and thus gwyddion once this will
> happen.

We have been NOT recommeding Debian since 2018 for this very reason. I
can still install GTK+ 1.2 in current ‘move fast and break things’
Fedora. So the removal of stable and dependable GTK+ 2.x seems just
silly.

At some point in medium-term horizon we plan to break everything and
switch to GTK+3. However, I expect it will be deprecated by then
everything in Debian will be expected to port to GTK+6, or quantum
wearables, or something.

While in the real world we are still geting questions about Windows XP
compatibility. Scientists are *extremely* conservative as no one wants
to brick a million-€ instrument by unnecessary software upgrade. I hear
complaints about software ‘why they had to change it again – why things
just cannot keep working?’ all the time. It is sad that Debian, which
used to be a very stable and conservative distro, decided against just
keep working, but it is what it is…

Regards,

Yeti