Bug#831828: libgtk2.0-0: GTK+ 2 is not GNOME and should not depend on GNOME icons

[Pierre Ynard]

Package: libgtk2.0-0
Version: 2.24.30-4
Severity: normal

The latest version bumps dependencies on icon packages
hicolor-icon-theme and gnome-icon-theme | adwaita-icon-theme from an
understandable Recommends to a hard Depends. The changelog gives little
explanation about why these would need to be hard Depends.

For reasons shared by a lot of users, I switched away from a GNOME-based
desktop environment, to awesome, inside which I run GTK2 applications.
I pretty much purged all GNOME and GTK3 packages from my system, to my
greatest satisfaction. My GTK2 applications currently run perfectly fine
within awesome without GNOME icons or even hicolor-icon-theme installed.

The Debian policy manual, section 7.2, states:

> The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is
> required for the depending package to provide a significant amount of
> functionality.

libgtk2.0-0 clearly provides the significant amount of functionality of
making my GTK2 applications run fine, without these GNOME dependencies.
In my understanding, especially with the changelog giving me no hint of
justification, the dependency is unwarranted and wrong and a violation
of the policy. I'm not sure to see how the language in the policy would
even qualify these icons for Recommends either, but I would understand.

As far as I can tell, neither libgtk2.0-0 nor my GTK2 applications
depend on these packages on my GNOME-less system. Please explain how
they would. Moreover, these icon packages pull two other unwelcome
dependencies, librsvg2-common and gtk-update-icon-cache, the latter
being GTK3 binaries. I guess it's lucky that the dependency chain stops
there on my system, for now. But this dependency creep on unwanted
software is one of the very reasons why a lot of users switched away
from GNOME.

Please don't start ruining GTK2 applications too. There's no freedom
to choose another desktop environment than GNOME if the most basic
applications pull it back like that.

Please revert the dependencies to Recommends, or even move them to a
package closer to GNOME and less likely to be installed by someone who
doesn't use GNOME. Please stop the dependency creep there.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.4.6-grsec (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

Versions of packages libgtk2.0-0 depends on:
ii  libatk1.0-0          2.20.0-1
ii  libc6                2.23-1
ii  libcairo2            1.14.6-1+b1
ii  libcups2             2.1.4-4
ii  libfontconfig1       2.11.0-6.4
ii  libfreetype6         2.6.3-3+b1
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0   2.34.0-1
ii  libglib2.0-0         2.48.1-2
ii  libgtk2.0-common     2.24.30-2
ii  libpango-1.0-0       1.40.1-1
ii  libpangocairo-1.0-0  1.40.1-1
ii  libpangoft2-1.0-0    1.40.1-1
ii  libx11-6             2:1.6.3-1
ii  libxcomposite1       1:0.4.4-1
ii  libxcursor1          1:1.1.14-1+b1
ii  libxdamage1          1:1.1.4-2+b1
ii  libxext6             2:1.3.3-1
ii  libxfixes3           1:5.0.2-1
ii  libxi6               2:1.7.6-1
ii  libxinerama1         2:1.1.3-1+b1
ii  libxrandr2           2:1.5.0-1
ii  libxrender1          1:0.9.9-2
ii  shared-mime-info     1.6-1

Versions of packages libgtk2.0-0 recommends:
pn  hicolor-icon-theme  <none>
pn  libgtk2.0-bin       <none>

Versions of packages libgtk2.0-0 suggests:
pn  gvfs             <none>
pn  librsvg2-common  <none>

-- no debconf information