Bug#864851: firefox-esr: Please revert to Gtk+ 2.0

[Pierre Ynard]

Hello,

> We should definitely follow testing/sid here and continue to use GTK3,

I'm not sure what you mean, because testing/sid has been using GTK2
until two days ago. According to the changelog, GTK3 was last enabled
in:

firefox (49.0-5) unstable; urgency=medium
[...]
  * debian/rules, debian/control: Re-enable Gtk+3 to see how it goes.
    Closes: #832301.
[...]
 -- Mike Hommey <glandium at debian.org>  Sat, 29 Oct 2016 19:54:35 +0900

And #832301 requested:

> Shouldn't the GTK3 support be reenabled in the experimental version?
> That would be intresting to debug the remaining issues with GTK3

And indeed the GTK3-enabled 52 ESR was only in experimental, until the
upload to unstable two days ago. My system has been installed back when
it was still iceweasel and is running unstable, and I believe I've never
had to upgrade to a GTK3 version of Firefox.

So my understanding of the situation seems a bit different. What I'd
like to continue with is GTK2. And in fact I mean on unstable, not
just jessie. At least this would easily solve the question of jessie
diverging from unstable.

I think I understand that 52 ESR is supposed to make it into stretch?
But conversely, do you not worry about forcing a GTK version change this
late in stretch? And do you not worry about forcing a GTK version change
this late in jessie? This jessie maintenance update will trigger in some
cases the installation of a big bunch of new packages, and some people
won't be happy about that happening on stable.

I don't want to use GTK3 on my system because of the reasons you can
imagine, and in fact my system works fine without GTK3 even installed.
Is there a plan to drop all GTK2 apps and migrate them to GTK3? Is there
a plan to drop GTK2 for Firefox? It sure looks like that was not the
purpose when GTK3 was enabled.

If there is no such plan, can we please continue being provided with
GTK2-only Firefox packages? Personally, I'm just not upgrading to this.
Some applications offer split GTK2 and GTK3 binary packages, would that
be an option? Is 45 ESR end-of-life, can security fixes still not be
backported because trademarks, to that well-tested GTK2 build?

Is it also true that 52 is dropping ALSA and mandating PulseAudio?
There's certainly a demand for classic lightweight, minimalist,
no-plumbing-bloat desktop experience; will people have to switch web
browsers too to achieve that?

I've enjoyed your maintainership, and I dearly hope we can keep enjoying
such builds of Firefox.

Best regards,

-- 
Pierre Ynard
"Une âme dans un corps, c'est comme un dessin sur une feuille de papier."