Following up on bug #50085, the current version of GTK (2.10.6) does not need shared-mime-info. It displays everything I have seen so far the same with and without it installed, including the file chooser dialog.
Just in case: Portage 2.1.2_rc3-r5 (selinux/2005.1/x86/hardened, gcc-3.4.6, glibc-2.3.6-r5, 2.6.18-hardened-r1 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.18-hardened-r1 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.60GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.12.7 Last Sync: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:50:01 +0000 dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7, 2.0.30 dev-lang/python: 2.4.4 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.18.1 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.61 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.7.9-r1, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10 sys-devel/binutils: 2.17 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.14 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.17-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/gconf /etc/java-config/vms/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--alphabetical" FEATURES="autoconfig collision-protect distlocks loadpolicy parallel-fetch sandbox selinux sesandbox sfperms strict stricter userfetch userpriv usersandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ftp.wh2.tu-dresden.de/pub/mirrors/gentoo ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/ ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linux/gentoo ftp://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo/" LANG="de_DE.UTF-8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed -Wl,--sort-common" LINGUAS="de" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS="--exclude-from /etc/portage/rsync_excludes" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X a52 aac alsa alsa_cards_ens1371 bzip2 cairo caps cjk crypt cups dts dvd dvdread elibc_glibc ffmpeg flac ftp gif hardened iconv idn input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse ipv6 jpeg kdeenablefinal kernel_linux linguas_de mmap mmx mp3 nls nptl offensive ogg opengl pam pic png selinux sse sse2 ssl symlink theora threads tiff truetype unicode userland_GNU video_cards_nvidia vorbis win32codecs xv xvid zlib" Unset: CTARGET, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL
I do not know whether anyone is actually interested in this, but to version 2.10.14 still applies what I mentioned above.
So you're trying to say, you don't have /usr/share/mime/mime.cache file and everything continues to work as is?
Please get back to us with the information requested by Samuli in comment #3. Thanks
Reopening, as a shared-mime-info dep is a blocker for using gtk+ on an embedded uclibc system, as shared-mime-info currently requires gettext on build, which is a no go with uclibc at this moment. I will try to investigate if the filechooser shows icons or not when I get to that. Meanwhile, what does shared-mime-info provide us, I believe that would be MIME magic for most of the stuff via freedesktop.org.xml? Meanwhile filed Bug 225711 for the unconditional gettext dependency that is bad for embedded. In GTK+ case, if something does need /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml (which I can very well understand, as it's where the mime magic comes from) - what parses it? Is it done with something other than libxml2? If yes, then the libxml2 dep could possibly be avoided by splitting it up into a package that provides update-mime-database and one that provides freedesktop.org.xml and its translations, so only the former would need libxml2 itself, and it would not be necessary at runtime, only build time (again possibly very good for minimal systems that do need MIME info but happen to not need anything else that needs libxml2)
In addition to probably using the MIME information data shipped by shared-mime-info, GIO in glib also calls the update-mime-database tool shipped by shared-mime-info in case of API calls of g_app_info_set_as_default_for_type(), which is probably rarely used, but nevertheless. If the utility is not present, simply a non-fatal warning is printed, though, but that means the functionality doesn't work. In addition we might actually want to PDEPEND on dev-util/desktop-file-utils as well, as the update-desktop-database utility from it is called by GIO as well for similar API in G(Desktop)AppInfo functions, such as g_app_info_set_as_default_for_extension(), g_app_info_add_supports_type() and more. Similarly probably rarely used (I can imagine f.ex nautilus using it when ported over now that GIO is more capable to handle .desktop files), but very important to have working if used, instead of odd unexpected missing functionality.
configure.in doesn't seem to require shared-mime-info :-/
I stated in my previous comment what actually DOES use shared-mime-info within gtk+ codebase. It's a runtime dependency of certain API, that is probably not used a lot though
Maybe an (enhancement) bug report could be opened in upstream also :-/ What do you think?
From my point of view, if this is not reported to upstream there are few changes of getting it solved someday :(
Not sure if it's useful information or not, but I am successfully deploying a system *with* /usr/share/mime/mime.cache, but *without* /usr/share/mime/packages/. (Sorry if waiting less than 6 months after the last comment acts as a combo breaker in this bug report.)
Nowadays, glib requires it per bug #409481. So I guess gtk+ could drop it from its requirements, but it would still be pulled anyway.
