Debian is removing Shutter from Buster (currently in testing).

shutter REMOVED from testing

https://tracker.debian.org/news/942812/shutter-removed-from-testing/

News for package shutter

Removed 0.94-1 from unstable

https://tracker.debian.org/news/994228/removed-094-1-from-unstable/

On Ubuntu 18.04, it’s missing dependencies and can’t edit images anymore.

The ability to edit screenshots using shutter has been broken because Ubuntu 18.04 no longer provides these packages in its repository:

1. libgoo-canvas-perl (needed for edit feature)
2. libgoocanvas-common (needed for edit feature)
3. libgoocanvas3 (needed for edit feature)
4. libgtk2-appindicator-perl (needed for AppIndicator)

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/shutter/+bug/1765726

http://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2018/05/fix-shutter-cannot-edit-screenshot-on-ubuntu-1804.html

When run from the command line, its output includes a bunch of warnings.

WARNING: Goo::Canvas/libgoo-canvas-perl is missing --> drawing tool will be disabled!

[ . . . ]

File::Glob::glob() will disappear in perl 5.30. Use File::Glob::bsd_glob() instead. at /usr/bin/shutter line 8212.

[ . . . ]

Unescaped left brace in regex is illegal here in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/^<.*>\n{ <-- HERE / at /usr/share/shutter/resources/system/upload_plugins/upload/vgyme.pm line 159.

Shutter was my go-to desktop application for cropping a bunch of screenshots and adding red arrows, circles, and boxes. It wasn’t removed because people aren’t using it; in fact Debian’s popularity contest lists over 4,000 installs.

Name	Number	%
shutter	4122	2.06%

https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=shutter

Rather it was removed because the Gnome 2 libraries are deprecated.

shutter: Depends on obsolete libgnome2-vfs-perl that will go away during the Buster cycle

[ … ]

this package is one of the very few blockers that currently prevent us from removing the obsolete libgnome2-perl and libgnome2-vfs-perl from the archive.

[ … ]

Unfortunately, shutter, a very nice Gtk2 screenshot application, depends on Gnome::VFS, which means that shutter will be removed from Debian unless this dependency is removed from shutter [2].

[ … ]

Considering that:

• upstream development seems dead
• Shutter uses GTK+ 2.x, which is the old-stable version of GTK
• Shutter is also heavily tied to X11 and does not work on Wayland

I’m not entirely sure why you think the whole thing shouldn’t be retired altogether.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=870418

The discussion on the bug report gets a little heated.

Because it simply works nicely? Only because Gtk/Gnome maniacs are switching to something rather useless, doesn’t mean that old software is becoming useless, too.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=870418

After a 1 year long unsuccessful process to try and find help to port Shutter to a current, maintained stack of libraries, we finally agreed the only way ahead is to remove Shutter from Debian

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=904526

I don’t know if there’s a lesson here.

• Don’t rely on unmaintained software?

  But only a few years ago, Shutter wasn’t unmaintained. In 2014, around the time I started using it, it was getting regular releases.

• Don’t rely on software with a lot of dependencies?

  Good luck with that. You know what else has a lot of dependencies? Web browsers.

• Don’t rely on GUI software?

  This was a screenshot editing program, so a GUI is sort of the point.

• Don’t rely on software that needs GNOME libraries?

  I dunno, Firefox relies on libgtk.