Xfdesktop (4.4.0-r3) depends on Thunar when the "dbus" use flag is present. Such is less than optimal in terms of flexibility, and is inconsistent with the builds from Xfce 4.2. Attached is a patch to xfdesktop-4.4.0-r3.ebuild that adds more explicit control over whether to build and install Thunar in addition to xfdesktop. In addition, an upgrade from 4.2 to 4.4 will not by default change the desktop behavior. Thunar is only necessary for adding icons to the desktop. Reproducible: Always
Created attachment 113019 [details, diff] xfdesktop-4.4.0-r3.ebuild.diff
No; this patch is just wrong, there's absolutely no point to require two use flags to enable one feature. --enable-file-icons needs --enable-thunarx, and depends on dbus-glib -> thunar is needed, game over.
You can disable the icons from Settings > Desktop even if you enable USE="dbus" and if you don't want it at all you can allways use package.use.
(In reply to comment #2) > No; this patch is just wrong, there's absolutely no point to require two use > flags to enable one feature. I agree that such behavior is undesirable, but it makes little sense to have a desktop-icon (and hence filemanager dependency) feature contingent upon the dbus USE flag. Better would be to use a more descriptive flag (e.g., "desktop-icons"; or if there is a precedent, use it) that handles the dependencies.
