Bug#677779: at-spi: Please add multiarch support

Goswin von Brederlow goswin-v-b at web.de
Sun Jun 17 11:13:04 UTC 2012


Michael Biebl <biebl at debian.org> writes:

> On 17.06.2012 02:52, Michael Biebl wrote:
>
>> I'm wondering why we actually still need at-spi in ia32-libs-gtk and if
>> we couldn't just drop it?
>
> I've seen that you blocked #677762 by this bug.
>
> I'm wondering why we actually still need at-spi in ia32-libs-gtk and if
> we couldn't just drop it?

I'm assuming at-spi is needed for vision impaired people. It would be
bad if 32bit apps would become unreadable on upgrade if we can avoid it.

> Btw, the same is true for e.g. the other deprecated gnome2 libs with ma
> related bug reports: libgnomecanvas, libbonobo or libart-lgpl.
>
> They are part of ia32-libs-gtk, but e.g. libgnome2 or libgnomeui aren't.
>
> So I'm wondering
> - why were those libs added to ia32-libs-gtk in the first place?

Packags where added whenever someone showed a need for one, wrote a
bugreport saying libfoo was needed to run bla.

> - which applications did require them?

Unfortunately there is no list for that. One would have to go through
all the old bugreports (debian and ubuntu) to see who filed a bug for
it. Which becomes even more difficult if the library was only added
because it was a dependency of something else.

> - are they still required today or couldn't they just be dropped?

Frankly with many packages I have no idea. Besides the problem of
figuring out why a library was needed there is also the problem that
frequently it was needed for some 3rd party application. So testing if
it still is needed can be tricky even if you know what application to
test.

> - seeing that almost every package requiring e.g. libbonobo also
> requires libgnome2 or libgnomeui, why are those libs not part of
> ia32-libs-gtk resp. need to be converted to ma

The reason they aren't in ia32-libs-gtk is simply that nobody complained
about them missing. So it seems that 3rd party 32bit software doesn't
use them or doesn't use them yet. Also don't overlook that ia32-libs*
has accumulated a lot of bitrot over the last 2 releases. Maintainance
has not been good.


Note: If you as maintainer say that libbonobo will not be converted to
multi-arch and are confident nobody needs it then I can remove it from
ia32-libs-gtk. I have done that for example for hal because the
maintainer wan't to have it removed from wheezy (he has only 2 reverse
depends left though). But if the libarry remains in wheezy then I would
rather multiarchify it than drop it. Too many unknowns in dropping it.

MfG
        Goswin





More information about the pkg-gnome-maintainers mailing list