[Pkg-ayatana-devel] Bug#1148485: Bug#1148485: libayatana-appindicator: deprecated upstream, superseded by libayatana-appindicator-glib

[Mike Gabriel]

Hi Simon,

On  So 20 Sep 2026 02:02:07 CEST, Simon McVittie wrote:

> Source: libayatana-appindicator
> Severity: normal
> Tags: upstream wontfix
>
> libayatana-appindicator appears to have been deprecated upstream and now
> makes applications that use it log a warning:
>
> pasystray[6472]: libayatana-appindicator is deprecated. Please use  
> libayatana-appindicator-glib in newly written code.

Writing with my upstream hat on: We have rowed back here temporarily  
and will continue supporting libayatana-appindicator from upstream  
side as long as GTK-3 is supported.

While that gives us some time, we need to introduce  
libaytana-appindicator-glib more and better. Indeed.

> I've opened this bug already tagged wontfix, on the assumption that the
> deprecation is intentional and won't change. I've found this to be a
> useful representation of intentionally deprecated libraries in the GNOME
> team, because it provides somewhere to track how many packages need to
> be fixed before the deprecated library can be removed, and can be raised
> to serious to trigger autoremovals from testing if the maintainer wants
> that to happen.

Long term, this makes sense, but maybe it is too early at this point?  
I will not have to to seriously deal with a transition from  
libayatana-appindicator to libayatana-appindicator-glib before the  
Debian 15 release cycle, I fear.

> If the intention is to phase this out and eventually remove it from
> Debian, I think it would be useful to do a usertagged mass bug filing on
> the packages that depend on libayatana-appindicator, with bug reports
> looking something like <https://bugs.debian.org/1079406> (which can then
> be escalated to important and eventually serious as progress is made
> towards removing it). Would you like help with that?

I think this is too early.

The point is that libayatana-indicator compiles-in bits of GTK-3  
(GtkMenu). And my understanding is that GtkMenu is not available in  
GTK-4 anymore. Hence the shift-over to GlibMenu in  
libayatana-appindicator-glib. But the transition will demand porting  
work on the renderers side (the indicator-applets) and on the  
application side, too.

> Is there any migration documentation that can be pointed to in bug
> reports, equivalent to the porting guide mentioned in #1079406?

Not yet.

> It would probably also be useful to move the deprecated libraries from
> Section: {libdevel,libs,introspection} into Section: oldlibs.
> Unfortunately a package maintainer cannot do this themselves: instead
> it's necessary to send a request to the ftp team, similar to
> <https://bugs.debian.org/1067833>.

Also too early? Maybe.

> Are any of the other libraries in the ayatana family deprecated? (Perhaps
> src:libdbusmenu, which seems to be quite dead at this point?)

libdbusmenu is indeed not maintained much on the upstream side  
(Canonical Ltd.) anymore. It will eventually die with  
libayatana-appindiator.

Greets,
Mike
-- 

mike gabriel aka sunweaver (Debian Developer)
mobile: +49 (1520) 1976 148
landline: +49 (4351) 486 14 27

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mail: sunweaver at debian.org, http://sunweavers.net

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