We do not need it per say as of now, but we should provide it as the 5.0 version we are shipping does not work well with utf8

See https://libxmlplusplus.github.io/libxmlplusplus/

ABI Versions

There are several ABI (Application Binary Interface) versions of libxml++. They can be installed in parallel.

libxml++-2.6: Old ABI, not recommended for new applications. Uses Glib::ustring from the glibmm-2.4 ABI.

libxml++-3.0: Uses Glib::ustring from the glibmm-2.4 ABI, therefore has methods that handle UTF-8 characters rather than raw bytes.

libxml++-4.0: Uses Glib::ustring from the newer glibmm-2.68 ABI, therefore has methods that handle UTF-8 characters rather than raw bytes.

libxml++-5.0: Does not depend on glibmm, is not as good at handling UTF-8 strings, has fewer dependencies.

The APIs of libxml++-3.0, libxml++-4.0 and libxml++-5.0 are very similar. The only significant difference is that libxml++-5.0 uses xmlpp::ustring instead of Glib::ustring.

In a new application, choose between libxml++-4.0 with UTF-8 support and libxml++-5.0 with fewer dependencies. Choose libxml++-3.0 only if you want UTF-8 support but don’t have access to the newer glibmm-2.68 ABI (glibmm version 2.68.0 or higher).

Bjørn Lie (iznogood) - 3 months ago

author source maintainer

We could just keep it inside GF/GN for now, and see if anyone ever asks for it?

My "fear" is that people do not switch their packages from depending on the old stuff since we do not provide the newer api's