Could I please get a detailed test case for this issue? I tried reproducing this bug using Ubuntu 18.10 (running a slightly modified GNOME). I created a simple red & blue design in GIMP 2.10.6 and saved it using the default .xcf format & file extension. I then opened Nautilus 3.26 and I saw a thumbnail for the file.
I don't even have gnome-xcf-thumbnailer installed. rgrep -i xcf /usr/share/thumbnailers/ doesn't produce any output so I don't know how the thumbnail was created. If gnome-xcf-thumbnailer is not needed, I'd like to remove it from Debian. Otherwise, we need to fix this bug (and disable the older gconf thumnbnailer registration) so that we can remove gconf from Debian. Thanks, Jeremy Bicha