Bug#968283: closed by Tobias Frost (Re: Bug#968204: Removal of packges which depend on GTK2)

[Matthew Wakeling]

On Thu, 19 Nov 2020, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:

This is an automatic notification regarding your Bug report
which was filed against the jack package:

#968283: jack: Freedb has closed. Use gnudb instead.

It has been closed by Tobias Frost .


If jack has been removed from Debian, is there a recommended alternative? 
Was it removed because of a better alternative, or lack of development?


Many thanks,

Matthew

Bug#968283: Bug#968204: Removal of packges which depend on GTK2

[Tobias Frost]

As jack has been removed from Debian in March already, should this bug be
closed?

Bug#968204: Removal of packges which depend on GTK2

[Pál Tamás Ács]

I just tried to explain the reasons why GTK2 is going to stay around for a
while and why it's very important to accept that.

I'm sorry if I had too much wide-ranged or off-topic statements. It wasn't
my intention to derail any technical discussion.

On Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 11:10 PM Sean Whitton 
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> On Mon 26 Oct 2020 at 08:59PM +01, Pál Tamás Ács wrote:
>
> >>
> >> Can you please take your conspiracy theories, mis-information and
> >> top-posting elsewhere, like /dev/null? Thanks.
> >
> >
> > I'm not sure where exactly my statements were conspiracy theories or
> > mis-information. Or you just don't like my opinion because it's kind of
> > different from the mainstream that you're used to?
> >
> > Please point out one or more of my statements that you think is false.
>
> I don't think this removal bug report is really an appropriate place for
> a wide-ranging discussion like this.  In the interests of efficiency,
> I'd be grateful if both of you could take it elsewhere.  Thank you!
>
> --
> Sean Whitton
>

Bug#968204: Removal of packges which depend on GTK2

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

On Mon 26 Oct 2020 at 08:59PM +01, Pál Tamás Ács wrote:

>>
>> Can you please take your conspiracy theories, mis-information and
>> top-posting elsewhere, like /dev/null? Thanks.
>
>
> I'm not sure where exactly my statements were conspiracy theories or
> mis-information. Or you just don't like my opinion because it's kind of
> different from the mainstream that you're used to?
>
> Please point out one or more of my statements that you think is false.

I don't think this removal bug report is really an appropriate place for
a wide-ranging discussion like this.  In the interests of efficiency,
I'd be grateful if both of you could take it elsewhere.  Thank you!

-- 
Sean Whitton


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Bug#968204: Removal of packges which depend on GTK2

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

On Sun 25 Oct 2020 at 11:43AM GMT, Simon McVittie wrote:

> On Sat, 10 Oct 2020 at 09:11:23 -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
>> Hello GNOME team,
>
> Note that pkg-gnome-maintainers receives bugmail etc. for the entire
> GNOME suite, and most (all?) GNOME maintainers aren't subscribed to that
> particular fire hose (we get bug mail for packages of interest, or for
> all GNOME packages, via tracker.debian.org instead). Our discussion list
> is debian-gtk-gnome; I only saw this because I happened to follow the
> link on a removal notification for one of the GTK2 mass-bug-filing mails.

Ah sorry about that.

Thank you for a useful reply.

-- 
Sean Whitton


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Bug#968204: Removal of packges which depend on GTK2

[Pál Tamás Ács]

>
> Can you please take your conspiracy theories, mis-information and
> top-posting elsewhere, like /dev/null? Thanks.


I'm not sure where exactly my statements were conspiracy theories or
mis-information. Or you just don't like my opinion because it's kind of
different from the mainstream that you're used to?

Please point out one or more of my statements that you think is false.

On Sun, Oct 25, 2020 at 10:42 PM Michael Gratton  wrote:

>
> On 26 October 2020 01:06:59 Pál Tamás Ács  wrote:
>
>> Technically, Gtk2 and Gtk3 are two different toolkits with a similar
>> name. It's a completely different thing that Red Hat is trying to make us
>> believe that GTK3 is an improved successor of GTK2. It isn't. It never has
>> been.
>>
>> GTK3 has been very much unstable, full of API breaks and annoyances from
>> the get-go. It's slower due to CPU bloat under certain circumstances, eats
>> up more RAM and is suffering from a serious UX dumbing down to the level of
>> consumer devices like smartphones thus being made less suitable for
>> desktop. Anti-features like mandatory recursive search
>>  in File Dialog have
>> also been introduced.
>>
>> GTK3 was marked stable in many distros despite it wasn't stable at all.
>> Software creators and package maintainers didn't want to migrate to a
>> poorly designed, underdeveloped, buggy graphical toolkit. They either moved
>> forward to Qt or stayed with Gtk2. A famous precedent case is the cancelled
>> GTK3 migration of Audacious. They went back to Gtk2 then moved forward
>> toward Qt.
>>
>> There must be a cooperation among Linux maintainters outside of Red Hat
>> to save Gtk2 and provide security updates and some critical bug fixes on
>> the maintainer level
>>
>
> Can you please take your conspiracy theories, mis-information and
> top-posting elsewhere, like /dev/null? Thanks.
>
> — Mike
>
>

Bug#968204: Removal of packges which depend on GTK2

[Michael Gratton]

On 26 October 2020 01:06:59 Pál Tamás Ács  wrote:
Technically, Gtk2 and Gtk3 are two different toolkits with a similar name. 
It's a completely different thing that Red Hat is trying to make us believe 
that GTK3 is an improved successor of GTK2. It isn't. It never has been.


GTK3 has been very much unstable, full of API breaks and annoyances from 
the get-go. It's slower due to CPU bloat under certain circumstances, eats 
up more RAM and is suffering from a serious UX dumbing down to the level of 
consumer devices like smartphones thus being made less suitable for 
desktop. Anti-features like mandatory recursive search in File Dialog have 
also been introduced.


GTK3 was marked stable in many distros despite it wasn't stable at all. 
Software creators and package maintainers didn't want to migrate to a 
poorly designed, underdeveloped, buggy graphical toolkit. They either moved 
forward to Qt or stayed with Gtk2. A famous precedent case is the cancelled 
GTK3 migration of Audacious. They went back to Gtk2 then moved forward 
toward Qt.


There must be a cooperation among Linux maintainters outside of Red Hat to 
save Gtk2 and provide security updates and some critical bug fixes on the 
maintainer level


Can you please take your conspiracy theories, mis-information and 
top-posting elsewhere, like /dev/null? Thanks.


— Mike

Bug#968204: Removal of packges which depend on GTK2

[Pál Tamás Ács]

Technically, Gtk2 and Gtk3 are two different toolkits with a similar name.
It's a completely different thing that Red Hat is trying to make us believe
that GTK3 is an improved successor of GTK2. It isn't. It never has been.

GTK3 has been very much unstable, full of API breaks and annoyances from
the get-go. It's slower due to CPU bloat under certain circumstances, eats
up more RAM and is suffering from a serious UX dumbing down to the level of
consumer devices like smartphones thus being made less suitable for
desktop. Anti-features like mandatory recursive search
 in File Dialog have also
been introduced.

GTK3 was marked stable in many distros despite it wasn't stable at all.
Software creators and package maintainers didn't want to migrate to a
poorly designed, underdeveloped, buggy graphical toolkit. They either moved
forward to Qt or stayed with Gtk2. A famous precedent case is the cancelled
GTK3 migration of Audacious. They went back to Gtk2 then moved forward
toward Qt.

There must be a cooperation among Linux maintainters outside of Red Hat to
save Gtk2 and provide security updates and some critical bug fixes on the
maintainer level.

On Sun, Oct 25, 2020 at 12:43 PM Simon McVittie  wrote:

> On Sat, 10 Oct 2020 at 09:11:23 -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> > Hello GNOME team,
>
> Note that pkg-gnome-maintainers receives bugmail etc. for the entire
> GNOME suite, and most (all?) GNOME maintainers aren't subscribed to that
> particular fire hose (we get bug mail for packages of interest, or for
> all GNOME packages, via tracker.debian.org instead). Our discussion list
> is debian-gtk-gnome; I only saw this because I happened to follow the
> link on a removal notification for one of the GTK2 mass-bug-filing mails.
>
> > The FTP Team are starting to see removal requests for packages which
> > use GTK2 and are unlikely to be ported to GTK3, but are not RC-buggy.
> > Examples are #968204 and #968283.
> >
> > I read your bug report against one of those two packages and smcv writes
> >
> > GTK 2 is used by some important productivity applications like GIMP,
> > and has also historically been a popular UI toolkit for proprietary
> > software that we can't change, so perhaps removing GTK 2 from Debian
> > will never be feasible. However, it has reached the point where a
> > dependency on it is a bug - not a release-critical bug, and not a
> > bug that can necessarily be fixed quickly, but a piece of technical
> > debt that maintainers should be aware of.
> >
> > My interpretation of this is that use of GTK2 is not really grounds for
> > removal by itself, because there is no removal of GTK2 planned for the
> > time being.
>
> Yes. As I said in the mass-bug-filing, I think use of GTK 2 is a bug,
> but not release-critical for bullseye. Depending what happens in the
> next 1-2 years, it might be RC for bookworm - I don't know.
>
> However, if a package hasn't been able to move from GTK 2 to GTK 3 in
> the time since GTK 2 was superseded (about a decade), that's a data point
> for assessing how actively maintained it is, both upstream and in Debian.
>
> > So maintainers who don't want to deal with a package which
> > is not likely to be updated for newer versions of GTK (which is fair
> > enough) should orphan rather than request removal.
>
> Not necessarily: a package's maintainer is in a good position to assess
> whether that package has a future in Debian, and whether it's suitable for
> inclusion in a stable release. I think we need to distinguish between
> "I think this package is suitable for Debian, but I can't/won't
> maintain it" (orphaning) and "from my knowledge as maintainer, I think
> this package is unsuitable for Debian" (RM: RoM).
>
> There's little point in orphaning a package if the most likely outcome
> is that several weeks or months later, someone with less knowledge of
> this particular package has to spend time on deciding that *now* it's
> time to remove it.
>
> smcv
>
>

Bug#968204: Removal of packges which depend on GTK2

[Simon McVittie]

On Sat, 10 Oct 2020 at 09:11:23 -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Hello GNOME team,

Note that pkg-gnome-maintainers receives bugmail etc. for the entire
GNOME suite, and most (all?) GNOME maintainers aren't subscribed to that
particular fire hose (we get bug mail for packages of interest, or for
all GNOME packages, via tracker.debian.org instead). Our discussion list
is debian-gtk-gnome; I only saw this because I happened to follow the
link on a removal notification for one of the GTK2 mass-bug-filing mails.

> The FTP Team are starting to see removal requests for packages which
> use GTK2 and are unlikely to be ported to GTK3, but are not RC-buggy.
> Examples are #968204 and #968283.
> 
> I read your bug report against one of those two packages and smcv writes
> 
> GTK 2 is used by some important productivity applications like GIMP,
> and has also historically been a popular UI toolkit for proprietary
> software that we can't change, so perhaps removing GTK 2 from Debian
> will never be feasible. However, it has reached the point where a
> dependency on it is a bug - not a release-critical bug, and not a
> bug that can necessarily be fixed quickly, but a piece of technical
> debt that maintainers should be aware of.
> 
> My interpretation of this is that use of GTK2 is not really grounds for
> removal by itself, because there is no removal of GTK2 planned for the
> time being.

Yes. As I said in the mass-bug-filing, I think use of GTK 2 is a bug,
but not release-critical for bullseye. Depending what happens in the
next 1-2 years, it might be RC for bookworm - I don't know.

However, if a package hasn't been able to move from GTK 2 to GTK 3 in
the time since GTK 2 was superseded (about a decade), that's a data point
for assessing how actively maintained it is, both upstream and in Debian.

> So maintainers who don't want to deal with a package which
> is not likely to be updated for newer versions of GTK (which is fair
> enough) should orphan rather than request removal.

Not necessarily: a package's maintainer is in a good position to assess
whether that package has a future in Debian, and whether it's suitable for
inclusion in a stable release. I think we need to distinguish between
"I think this package is suitable for Debian, but I can't/won't
maintain it" (orphaning) and "from my knowledge as maintainer, I think
this package is unsuitable for Debian" (RM: RoM).

There's little point in orphaning a package if the most likely outcome
is that several weeks or months later, someone with less knowledge of
this particular package has to spend time on deciding that *now* it's
time to remove it.

smcv

Bug#968204: Removal of packges which depend on GTK2

[Sean Whitton]

Hello GNOME team,

The FTP Team are starting to see removal requests for packages which
use GTK2 and are unlikely to be ported to GTK3, but are not RC-buggy.
Examples are #968204 and #968283.

I read your bug report against one of those two packages and smcv writes

GTK 2 is used by some important productivity applications like GIMP,
and has also historically been a popular UI toolkit for proprietary
software that we can't change, so perhaps removing GTK 2 from Debian
will never be feasible. However, it has reached the point where a
dependency on it is a bug - not a release-critical bug, and not a
bug that can necessarily be fixed quickly, but a piece of technical
debt that maintainers should be aware of.

My interpretation of this is that use of GTK2 is not really grounds for
removal by itself, because there is no removal of GTK2 planned for the
time being.  So maintainers who don't want to deal with a package which
is not likely to be updated for newer versions of GTK (which is fair
enough) should orphan rather than request removal.

I wanted to ask whether you agree with me about this.

-- 
Sean Whitton