I think the only reason we currently use (and need) libgnome is the sound plugin. When we drop that it should be easy to drop the dependency as well.

Isn't it possible to dlopen it from the sound plugin ?

The sound plugin should probably just be changed to use libcanberra for the sample playing (not sure why it needs to do that really). Also, if we are moving to PulseAudio, there is no need to start ESD, which is what gnome_sound is used for.

(In reply to comment #2)
> Isn't it possible to dlopen it from the sound plugin ?

Even if it was (which I don't think it is in this case, haven't really investigated, though), what's the point?

a) is dlopen any faster than linking directly? That'd be rather broken.
b) we don't need the sound plugin anymore if we drop esd, so why bother?

(In reply to comment #3)
> The sound plugin should probably just be changed to use libcanberra for the
> sample playing (not sure why it needs to do that really). Also, if we are
> moving to PulseAudio, there is no need to start ESD, which is what gnome_sound
> is used for.

The sound plugin doesn't play samples. We don't need it.

2008-10-29  Jens Granseuer  <...>

        Get rid of libgnome (bug #557808).

        * configure.ac: bump required gtk+ version to 2.13.1
        * gnome-settings-daemon/main.c: (main): don't use g_program_init
        * plugins/a11y-keyboard/Makefile.am:
        * plugins/a11y-keyboard/gsd-a11y-keyboard-manager.c:
        (ax_response_callback), (ax_stickykeys_response),
        (ax_slowkeys_response), (on_slow_keys_action),
        (on_sticky_keys_action): replace gnome_help_display_desktop with
        gtk_show_uri

This btw has done little to improve our startup time, as libgnome-desktop pull them all in again.  So, while the ldd of gnome-settings-daemon has gone down to below 50, the plugins are all still at 80.  Needs libgnome-desktop to be broken into deprecated and living parts.

My bad.  gnome-desktop in trunk doesn't drag them in.