Bug#996602: meld: is the dependency on libcanberra-gtk3-module genuinely useful?

[Bálint Réczey]

Hi Simon,

Simon McVittie <smcv at debian.org> ezt írta (időpont: 2021. okt. 16., Szo, 0:42):
>
> Package: meld
> Version: 3.20.4-1
> Severity: wishlist
>
> While discussing a system integration issue involving libcanberra-gtk3-module
> and Flatpak, I was surprised to find that meld Depends on
> libcanberra-gtk3-module. This is a GtkModule that looks for GTK events
> such as windows closing, modal dialogs appearing, etc. and generates sound
> events for them, each of which can optionally be associated with a sound
> effect via a theme.
>
> I'm slightly confused that event sounds are considered more important for
> a graphical diff viewer than for any other random GUI application. I could
> understand something like a chat app wanting audible alerts, but unless
> meld has functionality I was not previously aware of, it isn't clear to me
> why sounds would be particularly desirable there?
>
> Is this dependency really needed, or could it be reduced to a Recommends
> or Suggests, or dropped completely? I would have expected meld to not have
> this dependency at all, not even at Suggests level.
>
> The dependency was added when replacing meld 1.x (GTK 2) with meld 3.x
> (GTK 3):
>
> >   * Update dependencies to use GTK 3 libraries and GObject introspection,
> >     namely libgtk-3-0, python-gi, libgtksourceview-3.0-1,
> >     gir1.2-gtksource-3.0, python-gi-cairo and libcanberra-gtk3-module
>
> but in the GTK 2 version, the only dependencies were python-gtk2,
> python-glade and python-gobject-2, with additional Recommends on
> python-gnome2, python-gconf and python-gtksourceview2. None of those
> seem like things that should have pulled in libcanberra-gtk-module,
> which was the GTK 2 equivalent of libcanberra-gtk3-module, so I'm not
> sure where that dependency came from?

I can't recall exactly, but I think somehow I found the package
needed. Maybe to work around errors shown on VNC when running meld:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/meld-list/2016-June/msg00003.html

I've tested that now and melds starts in VNC without complaining about
missing canberra, thus dropping it should be OK. The next upload will
drop the dependency, probably when there is a new upstream release.

Cheers,
Balint