Bug#942135: Have either synaptic removed or have it rebuilt with libgtk3-perl in it recommends.

[intrigeri]

Hi,

shirish शिरीष:
> Dunno if this is the right place to discuss it or not. Integri asked
> hence sharing.

Thanks for caring!

> There is also another package synaptic which still uses libgtk2-removal.

> $ aptitude why libgtk2-perl
> i   task-mate-desktop Recommends synaptic
> i A synaptic          Recommends libgtk2-perl (>= 1:1.130)

I don't particularly know Synaptic nor debconf so take all this with
a grain of salt: I might have misunderstood something fundamental.

AFAICT:

 - The synaptic codebase does not use libgtk2-perl directly.
 - This Recommends is historically in place so that the user
   can benefit from debconf's GNOME frontend.
 - debconf's GNOME frontend has been ported to libgtk3-perl 1.5 years
   ago (first released in 1.5.66):
   https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-debconf/debconf/commit/0250616b

Hence, the current "Recommends: libgtk2-perl" has been useless
for a year an a half. With libgtk2-perl being phased out,
this Recommends is now a more serious problem. On top of that,
a suitable dependency on libgtk3-perl is missing.

Jeremy Bicha filed #891877 a while ago, requesting that Synaptic's
dependencies are updated accordingly. I believe the actions Jeremy
suggested on #891877 will solve the problem shirish is raising here,
improve the life of Synaptic's users, and make it clearer what is the
status of libgtk2-perl in the archive.

Thoughts?

(Oh my, so many words for a bug that can be fixed by s/2/3/ in one
single place :)

Cheers,
-- 
intrigeri