[pkg-cinnamon] Bug#881613: cinnamon-desktop-environment: Recommends hamster-applet which should not be in buster

[Simon McVittie]

Source: cinnamon-desktop-environment
Version: 3.4
Severity: important
User: pkg-gnome-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org
Usertags: oldlibs python-wnck gnome-python-desktop

cinnamon-desktop-environment Recommends hamster-applet, which uses many
unmaintained GNOME 2 libraries that should not be in Debian 10. It is
unmaintained upstream (latest release 2010, Debian has a git snapshot
from 2012) and appears to have been superseded by
<https://github.com/projecthamster/hamster>, which has itself been
superseded by a more modular rewrite that uses several
<https://github.com/projecthamster/> repositories.

This Recommends is probably also contributing to hamster-applet's
artificially high popcon score, which has led to it being treated as a
key package and not eligible for autoremoval (the GNOME metapackages in
jessie also depended on it, which has also increased its historical
popcon score).

If hamster-applet gets fixed and modernized (PyGI, GTK+ 3, GSettings
instead of GConf, and other non-deprecated dependencies), this bug can
be closed. This does not seem particularly likely to happen, but it could.

If hamster-applet is removed from testing/unstable, then this bug will be
raised to a release-critical severity (as soon as hamster-applet leaves
main, this will become 'serious' severity due to Policy §2.2.1).

Regards,
    smcv