Bug#1018871: ibus-tests:armel: depends on gnome-shell:armel which is likely to be removed

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson <gunnarhj@debian.org>]

Hi Simon!

On 2022-09-01 10:10, Simon McVittie wrote:
> ibus-tests depends on gnome-shell, which it uses to run the ibus
> test suite.
>
> As a result in changes to mozjs, it looks likely that we will have
> to remove gjs from the armel architecture, which means also removing
> gnome-shell:armel (see #1018076). This will make the
> ibus-tests:armel package uninstallable.
>
> The obvious solution is to remove ibus-tests:armel as well, but
> because ibus does not have a direct or indirect build-dependency on
> gjs, ibus-tests:armel would just come back (and be uninstallable)
> next time ibus was rebuilt.
>
> I think there are two choices for how to deal with this:
>
> 1. Only build and run ibus-tests on architectures with a working
>    gjs, but continue to build the rest of the ibus package on
>    architectures where gjs is unavailable
> 2. Add a direct or indirect build-dependency on gjs so that none of
>    the ibus packages are built on architectures where gjs is
>    unavailable
>
> The attached patch implements the first option. It is untested, but
> I hope it does the right thing.

I think the first option makes most sense in principle, but given the 
current ibus packaging, maybe these lines in debian/rules would be more 
suitable:

ifeq ($(DEB_HOST_ARCH), armel)
   skip_packages = -Nibus-tests
endif

Please let me know if you think that would address the issue.

> I think the second option would be appropriate if ibus is not
> intended to be used at all on non-GNOME desktops, but looking at its
> bug list, it seems to be at least partially usable in non-GNOME
> desktops like XFCE.

Even if GNOME chose to integrate IBus, IBus is not really a GNOME 
component, but can be used as an independent input method framework on 
any desktop environment AFAIK.

--
Gunnar