Allow installing ssconvert without gnome dependencies

[Ian Phillips]

ssconvert is an excellent tool and very useful for webserver applications that need to convert documents. However, for security reasons, I do not want to install all of the Gnome-related dependencies on my webserver:

The following extra packages will be installed:
  consolekit dbus-x11 enchant evince evince-common gconf-service
gconf-service-backend gconf2 gconf2-common glib-networking
glib-networking-common
  glib-networking-services gnome-desktop-data gnome-user-guide gnumeric-common
gnumeric-doc gsettings-desktop-schemas gvfs gvfs-common gvfs-daemons
  gvfs-libs hunspell-en-us launchpad-integration libatasmart4 libck-connector0
libcolamd2.7.1 libdevmapper-event1.02.1 libenchant1c2a libevince3-3
  libframe6 libgail-3-0 libgconf-2-4 libgconf2-4 libgdu0 libgeis1 libgeoclue0
libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libglapi-mesa libgnome-keyring-common
  libgnome-keyring0 libgoffice-0.8-8 libgoffice-0.8-8-common libgrail5 libgrip0
libgsf-1-114 libgsf-1-common libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0
  libgstreamer0.10-0 libgtk-3-0 libgtk-3-bin libgtk-3-common libgudev-1.0-0
libhunspell-1.3-0 libjavascriptcoregtk-3.0-0
  liblaunchpad-integration-3.0-1 liblaunchpad-integration-common libllvm3.0
liblvm2app2.2 libnautilus-extension1a liborc-0.4-0 libpam-ck-connector
  libpolkit-agent-1-0 libpolkit-backend-1-0 libpoppler-glib8 libproxy1
libsgutils2-2 libsoup2.4-1 libspectre1 libwebkitgtk-3.0-0
  libwebkitgtk-3.0-common libx11-xcb1 libxcb-glx0 libxcb-shape0 libxtst6 libxv1
libxxf86dga1 libxxf86vm1 libyelp0 lp-solve mtools policykit-1
  policykit-1-gnome udisks x11-utils yelp yelp-xsl

Yikes! Is is possible to decouple ssconvert from all of these dependencies and have a lightweight, "headless" version for command-line apps? Gnumeric itself does not appear to have this many dependencies:

https://projects.gnome.org/gnumeric/downloads.shtml

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Gérard Bigot (gerard-bigot)]

Could someone take a look at this , please?

[Finlay Thompson (finlay-nz)]

I would like to support this idea. The ssconvert tool is awesome, all of x11 not so much.

[Paul Frischknecht (masterxilo)]

We are not the first to point out all the baggage: https://inconsolation.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/ssconvert-an-awful-lot-of-baggage/

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

I had a quick look at the source code - ssconvert describes itself as a wrapper.

It'll produce no output without GTK+; so the only way to fork & re-write alternate functions that current gtk+ provides, ie. the addition of loads of new code to code, maintain & test.

This would make it more of a security concern in my opinion; a new code-base downstream that would need patches upstream (ssconvert) to be re-written & tested for this new fork. Further changes made upstream in gtk+ could mean this new 'fork' could produce different output overtime to the ssconvert gtk+ based program. This will be a lot of work to maintain.

(The decoupling of gnumeric may be simpler; but again you'd be forking gnumeric code and thus creating a new maintenance problem in my opinion).

The current build reduces workload immensely, is far more security-aware (code wise; far less code to maintain & test) by using the code found in gtk+ & gnumeric.