Bug#765501: freeciv-gtk: should depend on, not recommend, gtk2-engines-pixbuf

[Markus Koschany]

On 15.10.2014 18:17, Ludovic Brenta wrote:
> Package: freeciv-gtk
> Version: 2.4.3-1
> Severity: normal
> 
> The GTK+2 version of the freeciv client will not work without
> gtk2-engines-pixbuf.  Symptoms: the client hangs doing nothing, not
> refreshing its window and not responding to user input.  The
> ~/.xsession-errors file contains:
> 
> Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap"
> 
> which is the only clue I had about a possible cause.
> 
> This happened on my 8-yer-old son's laptop, which is a 13-year-old
> Apple iBook where I installed Debian Jessie (testing) and configured
> apt *not* to install recommended packages by default.
> 
> Therefore the Recommends: gtk2-engines-pixbuf should be strenghened to
> Depends:.
> 
> There is no explanation in #677891 why the maintainer chose Recommends:
> when upstream said Depends: was necessary; hence this new bug report.

Hello,

I assume Clint chose Recommends because without gtk2-engines-pixbuf one
experiences only graphical glitches which is a relatively minor, even though
annoying, issue.
I cannot reproduce that the gtk2 client will not work without
gtk2-engines-pixbuf but I agree that it should be installed by default. Always
remember that disabling Recommends comes at a price and that users are then
supposed to install and configure the software manually.

I think in this case we can safely depend on gtk2-engines-pixbuf but I wonder
why it is necessary to declare a dependency on a gui package in the first place
and why gtk2-engines-pixbuf is neither detected at build-time nor pulled in
by other Gnome packages.

Regards,

Markus




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