The Dropbox Debian package has outdated dependencies and is therefore uninstalled

[Björn K.3]

With version 1.44.7-3 of the Pango library the installation package is finally renamed (comes - added) and the transitional package becomes ineffective. This was announced in November 2017.
The solution is relatively simple by replacing the "depends on libpango1.0-0" with "depends on lippango-1.0-0". This means that the Dropbox package for Debian can be run again under Debian Stable / Sid and will not be uninstalled from April 2020 due to missing dependencies.

I hope I can use this to contact a Dropbox developer to let him know.

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Das Dropbox Debian Paket hat veraltete Abhängigkeiten und wird deswegen deinstalliert

Mit der Version 1.44.7-3 der Pango Bibliothek wird das Installationspaket final unbenannt (ein - kommt dazu) und das Transitional Paket unwirksam. Dies wurde im November 2017 angekündigt.
Die Lösung ist relativ einfach indem die "hängt ab von libpango1.0-0" durch "hängt ab von lippango-1.0-0" ersetzt wird. Damit ist das Dropbox Paket für Debian auch wieder unter Debian Stable/Sid lauffähig und wird nicht ab April 2020 wegen fehlender Abhängigkeiten deinstalliert.

Ich hoffe ich kann hiermit einem Entwickler von Dropbox erreichen um ihn das mitzuteilen.

[Здравко]

Hi @Björn K.3,

Let's hope somebody will listen to you! 🙏

Good luck... for all of us!

[Buddhi1980]

My solution was to compile and install Dropbox from source. 

But you it would be good to bring it back working from debian package.

[Здравко]

Hi @Buddhi1980,

It's much simpler to install correct package and ignore the wrong dependence, but is this something fine for a big company like Dropbox! That's not the first mistake in dependencies declaration, probably not the last. Such inconsistencies are inconvenient, annoying, and confusing at least.

[Björn K.3]

@Buddhi1980 

Thanks for the hint. I could do that, but why should I do the work and then always import all the updates by hand and check whether everything is still running? No thanks, the solution is very simple and just a failure by the developer.

I'm there @Здравко of his opinion and wait and see.

Since I pay nothing for the use and only use the free functions, I have to wait until someone points out the support.

[jbglaw · Accepted solution]

I contacted Dropbox Support on this. The basic outcome is that my request should be forwarded to developers internally, but in that end pure Debian (or Devuan) isn't a supported platform.  I quite like who easily Dropbox used to work, but I'd like to have it working and not wait for me to rebuild packages (which could easily be fixed by Dropbox.)

So if I need to put work into getting Dropbox up'n'running smoothly again (as a paying customer) on my systems, I'd probably rather drop it altogether if favour of some WebDAV server. Should work equally well for my setup. Maybe with a nice frontend (ie. NextCloud/OwnCloud or something like that.) Happily, I don't depend on the specific product "Dropbox", but only on "filesharing being visible in the filesystem."

[Björn K.3]

Thanks for trying @jbglaw.

I only install the official Ubuntu package on Debian and there the problem should be there soon.

After all, support now knows and that was my goal.

[billysneed]

I also opened a ticket w/ Dropbox support about this dependency issue. They directed me to this community brouhaha, where I found this post (thanks!).

It's silly and unfortunate that this is the process. But, I "liked" the original message from Bjorn. Hopefully more will do the same.

Billy