Desktop Team Integration Squad Updates – Monday 12th February 2024

  • Began packaging components of GNOME 46 Beta
  • I looked into packaging evolution-data-server 46 Beta. However, its includes a soname bump which means a new library package name but the pending 64-bit time libraries are already in Debian Experimental. This means there is nowhere on the Debian side for me to upload this to right now. We plan to do the evolution-data-server transition after the time transition is completed.
     
  • Synced adwaita-icon-theme from Debian. Previously, Ubuntu had split the package to provide a separate “full” version but this is no longer needed since adwaita-icon-theme is now a very small package because many icons have been removed.
  • Also updated adwaita-icon-theme to 46 Beta. This caused a few things to break because of major changes in how the cursor theme works. The breakage doesn’t affect Ubuntu’s default install since we use the Yaru cursor theme which does not include those changes at this time.
     
  • GNOME Kiosk landed in Debian Experimental and will land in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS soon. It is not an app but more of a service to use a thin Mutter client to run a full screen app, like is done on computer kiosks.
  • GNOME’s new image viewer app Loupe landed in Debian Unstable and will land in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
     
  • The webkitgtk 4.0 removal transition is basically done in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS except for the ubiquity installer. It looks like Ubiquity will need to be kept in the Ubuntu archives for 24.04 LTS. Perhaps we will disable the timezonemap feature.
  • Added an autopkgtest to Ubuntu’s fdk-aac-free package, required as part of the ongoing Main Inclusion review.
  • Packaged libproxy 0.5 for Debian Experimental. We need to update the autopkgtests before this can land in Debian and Ubuntu. libproxy 0.5 is a major rewrite (including from C++ to C).
     
  • Saddened to hear of the passing of Gunnar Hjalmarsson. Gunnar was a volunteer member of the Ubuntu Desktop Team He was also the maintainer of Ubuntu desktop user documentation and a leader for translation and other internationalization work in Ubuntu for many years.

Other News

  • Marc Leeman is packaging gstreamer 1.23.1 in Debian Experimental. We are expecting gstreamer 1.24.0 to be released around the end of February which is early enough that it should be included in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
  • Matthias Geiger is packaging the GNOME 46 Rust libraries update in Debian Experimental.
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