Bug#777608: zenity: depends on WebKitGTK

[Simon McVittie]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2023 at 12:01:41 +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Feb 2015 at 18:22:52 +0200, Török Edwin wrote:
> >    I see that zenity has a configure flag to enable/disable webkit support,
> >    would it be possible to provide a zenity-nohtml package that would
> >    "Provides: zenity" so I can keep my *DE installed without depending on a package that has
> >    no security support?
> 
> The problem with that approach is that an unknown number of packages and
> user scripts run `zenity --text-info --html ...`, which requires the
> WebKit feature to be enabled. Until now, "Depends: zenity" has been a
> correct way to declare a dependency on a HTML-capable version of zenity,
> so we can't easily tell whether a package with "Depends: zenity" needs
> that feature or not.

Coming back to this after the Debian 12 release:

Since then, I've found that the versions of zenity in various other
distributions (including at least Arch, Fedora and openSUSE) are built
with the WebKit feature disabled. This means that portable software cannot
safely assume that `zenity --text-info --html ...` will work, making it
less likely that we have packages in Debian that rely on that feature.

Now that we're at the beginning of the Debian 13 cycle, it's the right time
to be making disruptive changes, so my proposal is now:

- upload zenity with the WebKit feature disabled
- see whether there are bug reports
- if there are no bug reports, leave the feature disabled
- if lots of packages need the WebKit feature, re-enable it, and add a
  zenity-minimal (or similar) that doesn't have it
- if only a few packages need the WebKit feature, add a zenity-full package
  and ask those packages to switch their dependency

I'm hoping that the result will be: no bug reports, and the feature stays
disabled.

If there are no objections from GNOME team maintainers, I'll upload
this change to experimental shortly, and aim to upload to unstable by
the end of this month.

    smcv