Evince got automatically installed after latest update

I use Manjaro XFCE (stable channel). After the latest update (2021-11-19), the evince document reader got automatically installed as a dependency of xdg-desktop-portal-gnome.

$ pactree -r evince
evince
└─xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
  └─xdg-desktop-portal

I don’t want to use evince. Is it safe to remove xdg-desktop-portal-gnome ? I don’t know what this package does (it seems to be some sort of “desktop integration”).

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You seem to know how pactree works - do you think its safe?

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xdg-desktop-portal/

$ pacman -Sip xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
...
Description              : A backend implementation for xdg-desktop-portal for
                           the GNOME desktop environment
...
$ pacman -Sip xdg-desktop-portal
...
Description              : Desktop integration portals for sandboxed apps
...

If you don’t use sandboxed apps, i think you can remove it.

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I am not using any sandboxed apps. This might be some leftover from flatpak, which I had removed some time back. I guess I can safely remove this package too.

Anyway, (in my opinion), xdg-desktop-portal-gnome should not depend on a pdf reader (evince). Should I file a bug report?

Its an Arch package.
You can if you want … but make sure to be prepared.
As in find out why it thinks evince is necessary and why you disagree.
(for example, if you skip dependency checks and remove evince while keeping portal … is xdg-desktop-portal-gnome still functional?)

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xdg-desktop-portal-gnome/

Is there any way to check its functionality in case snap/flatpak are not installed? This package is supposed to be for sandboxed apps.

I dont use it, so I dont really know …
I would think flatpak is one of the easier things to try.
Install flatpak, install flatpak app, uninstall evince with something like

sudo pacman -Rdd evince

Then try running flatpak manager to install/uninstall, and flatpak app, and find results.

(you may also need to search/remove orphans after this because of the skipped depends)

Well, the -git package doesn’t need it… but xdg-desktop-portal-gtk does have it as optional dependency.

I also noticed the arch package xdg-desktop-portal-gnome has only had one commit, 16 days ago, from heftig.
(heightening the possibility it is a mistake)

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