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