Bug#1112092: gvfs-backends: Google Drive backend was removed

[Simon McVittie]

Control: retitle -1 gvfs-backends: Google Drive backend was removed
Control: severity -1 wishlist
Control: tags -1 + upstream

On Tue, 26 Aug 2025 at 10:31:26 +0200, Michele Cane wrote:
>I have a google account added via gnome-online accounts. As of teh latest update, I am not able to mount teh remote location from teh file manager as I used to do.
...
>I do not know if this is due to bug #1110399

Yes it is. Unfortunately, the Google Drive backend requires some 
unmaintained libraries (libsoup2.4 and libgdata), so it was switched off 
after the Debian 13 release. It is not feasible to provide long-term 
security support for the required libraries, so they are very likely to 
be removed from Debian during the Debian 14 cycle.

In <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gvfs/-/merge_requests/266> (which is 
the upstream equivalent of that change), they say:

     If people miss the Google Drive integration, we suggest that the
     Google Drive part of libgdata could be split into a separate library
     and ported to libsoup3 for use by gvfs.

If that happens, then the Google Drive backend can be re-enabled.

     smcv