Xfce Forum

Craig C

Member

Registered: 2019-11-11

Posts: 10

Does Thunar need Perl?

It says Perl is required for Thunar at "git.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/about/".
But Arch Linux doesn't list Perl as a dependency at "archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/thunar/".
How can this be?

Is Perl just required for compiling, or during run-time?
If just run-time, what is it used for, and can I do without it?

I haven't used ANY Xfce components yet, or Arch, I'm just in the planning stages for my new distro.
I did alot of searching and can't find any info on Perl's purpose in Thunar.

alcornoqui

Member

Registered: 2014-07-28

Posts: 832

Re: Does Thunar need Perl?

From a brief look at my system, libexo, which is a libthunarx dependency, recommends liburi-perl, but it is not installed.

More concretely, libexo-1-0 and libexo-2-0 both recommend (but not depend on) liburi-perl; libexo-1-0 is a hard dependency of libthunarx-2-0, while libexo-2-0 is a hard dependency of libthunarx-3-0, all of them installed in my Xubuntu 18.04, which passed from Xfce 4.12 to 4.14 recently.

I think that I could now uninstall libthunarx-2-0 and libexo-1-0 without breaking anything (well, apart from the xfce4-mailwatch-plugin, which I don't use).

So, uninstalling Perl wholesale would break things in my system (dkms, build-essentials, git, etc), but not Thunar AFAIK.

Or that's what some minutes looking at Synaptic package manager tells me...

Hopefully someone wiser can give a more definitive answer!

edit: this is the link that gave me a hint

Last edited by alcornoqui (2019-11-11 10:56:22)

Craig C

Member

Registered: 2019-11-11

Posts: 10

Re: Does Thunar need Perl?

Thanks for the info, alcornoqui.
So, if liburi-perl is a distant dependency of thunar, and just to send mail, that is enough for it to be considered required?

Can anyone else shed some light? I really don't want to have to install perl, and picking a file manager & desktop env takes alot of investment.

alcornoqui

Member

Registered: 2014-07-28

Posts: 832

Re: Does Thunar need Perl?

That's all I know, I'm just an avg user...

You may still get a definitive answer here, but chances might be better in the Xfce-dev mailing list or the official IRC channel.

Good luck with your efforts!