Bug#1126858: matlab-support: Remove Recommends: libgtk2.0-0t64

[Jeremy Bícha]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 5:17 AM Sébastien Villemot <sebastien at debian.org> wrote:
> Note that matlab-support being a support package for proprietary MATLAB
> software, it does not use gtk2 itself, so removing the Recommends is
> straightforward.
>
> However, the problem is that MATLAB, even in its latest version
> (R2025b) still relies on gtk2 for some of its functionality, and does
> not vendor the library but uses the distro-provided one. Hopefully they
> will remove that dependency in some near release, but even that will
> not solve the problem for older MATLAB versions.

Because gtk2 is still in Forky for the Debian Installer, I guess it
could be ok to keep the Recommends: gtk2 for now too.

If you have contact with the MATLAB maintainers, it might be good to
let them know that distros are getting closer to removing gtk2 from
their main repositories. Arch Linux did that a few months ago
(although gtk2 was added to the AUR instead).

Because MATLAB is proprietary, paid software, it's possible for people
to only have a license to an older version, right? ☹️

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha