Or perhaps we should just pull all of KDE as it is mostly based on QT and there is a lot of this, "Thing that has no business needing web browser functionality suddenly requires most of Chrome (qt-webengine)" .

I understand I'd be a serious blow to those using KDE but the fact is it's facing a creeping death already as one bit after another fall to this.

I can understand @dllud's and/or KDE users frustration. It's gotta be hugely annoying to watch as pieces keep falling off you DE.

CMakeLists.txt:131 from marble-18.12.0.tar.xz [1] shows that this package should build nicely without webengine.

 find_package(Qt5 ${REQUIRED_QT_VERSION}
        COMPONENTS
            WebEngine
            WebEngineWidgets
    )

   if ( NOT Qt5WebEngineWidgets_FOUND )
     set ( MARBLE_NO_WEBKITWIDGETS TRUE )
   endif()

I will give it a go and report back.

[1] https://download.kde.org/stable/applications/18.12.0//src/marble-18.12.0.tar.xz

Built successfully without qt5-webengine. I am now running marble-qt with no issues so far. Thus no need to remove these packages, but you will have to rebuild them.

On the PKGBUILD, besides removing qt5-webengine, I also had to take out some rm commands because I was getting cannot remove XXX errors. Not sure if it was the right thing to do. I am pasting the full diff bellow.

This should be easy to put into ABSLibre. Can someone do it? Otherwise, if you would like me to put it into ABSLibre or a personal repo, please instruct on how should I get the necessary push permissions.

diff --git a/marble/trunk/PKGBUILD b/marble/trunk/PKGBUILD
index 4e6ddff..b5f0237 100644
--- a/marble/trunk/PKGBUILD
+++ b/marble/trunk/PKGBUILD
@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ arch=(x86_64)
 url="https://www.kde.org/applications/system/marble" 
 license=(GPL)
 makedepends=(extra-cmake-modules gpsd kdoctools knewstuff kparts krunner libwlocate phonon-qt5
-             plasma-workspace qt5-serialport qt5-tools qt5-webengine shapelib)
+             plasma-workspace qt5-serialport qt5-tools shapelib)
 source=("https://download.kde.org/stable/applications/$pkgver/src/$pkgbase-$pkgver.tar.xz"{,.>
 sha256sums=('db39df148d327a61fd6080d4b3e55c8734762e4042c98386229fe3fbbcd85f52'
             'SKIP')
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ build() {

 package_marble-common() {
   pkgdesc='Common libraries and plugins for Marble'
-  depends=(qt5-svg qt5-webengine phonon-qt5 desktop-file-utils)
+  depends=(qt5-svg phonon-qt5 desktop-file-utils)
   optdepends=('gpsd: GPS based geolocation'
               'libwlocate: WLAN based geolocation'
               'qt5-serialport: APRS plugin'
@@ -50,13 +50,11 @@ package_marble-common() {

   cd build
   make DESTDIR="$pkgdir" install
-  rm -r "$pkgdir"/usr/share/{config.kcfg,kxmlgui5,metainfo,plasma} \
+  rm -r "$pkgdir"/usr/share/{metainfo,plasma} \
         "$pkgdir"/usr/bin \
-        "$pkgdir"/etc \
         "$pkgdir"/usr/lib/qt/{qml,plugins/*.so} \
-        "$pkgdir"/usr/share/applications/{marble_geo.desktop,marble_worldwind.desktop,org.kde>
-        "$pkgdir"/usr/share/kservices5/{marble_part.desktop,plasma*} \
-        "$pkgdir"/usr/share/locale/*/LC_MESSAGES/*.mo
+        "$pkgdir"/usr/share/applications/org.kde.marble*.desktop \
+        "$pkgdir"/usr/share/kservices5/plasma* 
 }

 package_marble-qt() {
@@ -77,5 +75,4 @@ package_marble() {
   make -C src/plasma DESTDIR="$pkgdir" install
   make -C src/plasmarunner DESTDIR="$pkgdir" install
   make -C src/thumbnailer DESTDIR="$pkgdir" install
-  rm -r "$pkgdir"/usr/share/{icons,doc/HTML}
 }

there could be a cascading effect of its removal

There's no need to remove this one in particular. Removing qt5-webengine from the PKGBUILD as I mentioned above works and delivers all 3 packages (marble, marble-qt and marble-common) in a usable state.

Please tell me whether some dev can add this to ABSLibre, or if and how I can do it myself.

It is worthwhile to check if other KDE applications also have soft dependencies on qt5-webengine like Marble.

(Thanks for the prompt reply.)

this is a very low-priority concern

I understand. I had an issue with it though:

pacman -Syu upgraded marble-qt but failed to upgrade marble-common due to the missing dependency. I was left with mismatching versions of these two packages on my system. (There seems to be no constraint to keep both packages at the same version.) I could still run Marble with no apparent issue, but I guess that won't always be the case if these two package keep drifting apart.

yes that is an unfortunate policy of QT to modularlize everything the way they do - it is a good idea in theory; but in practice, most of the modules end up be tightly coupled to the same version of the others, negating much of the benefits of modularization - the primary effect of which being no more than long dependency lists for most QT packages

Thanks! Shouldn't it be removed/filtered from [extra]?

pacman -Ss marble-common
libre/marble-common 18.12.2-1.parabola1
    Common libraries and plugins for Marble
extra/marble-common 18.12.2-1
    Common libraries and plugins for Marble

it is. this will sort itself out with the next repo update tonight.

Hi bill,

There is an alternative version of 'marble-common' in libre that I (sort of) maintain. I send a PR whenever it no longer works with the current marble version from Arch.

As such, besides 'marble-common', no other package needs to be blacklisted as they work with the 'marble-common' from libre. All in all, things are good as they are.

The difference between 'marble' and 'marble-qt' revolves around KDE integration. 'marble' has a deeper integration with KDE.