Re: Bug#681834: network-manager, gnome, Recommends vs Depends
]] Ian Jackson
> Whereas:
>
> 1. Our technical objectives are:
These objectives and the anti-objectives further down seem a bit random
to me, written more to fit the end goal than actually showing what the
objectives are.
[...]
> (ii) Users should be able to conveniently install and upgrade
> gnome without network-manager.
When you write «gnome», are you talking about the «gnome» package or
some other package? If so, why? Why require it to be the «gnome»
package rather than asking them to have a gnome-but-without-nm
metapackage? You're talking about the gnome-core package further down.
(I think that'd be fairly silly of the TC to require this, but that's
your perogative.)
> (iii) Users who deliberately removed network-manager in squeeze
> (which they will generally have done by deliberately violating
> the Recommends from the gnome metapackage) should not have to
> do anything special to avoid it coming back in wheezy.
>
> (iv) Users who do make a decision that they do not want to use
> network-manager should not have to read specific
> documentation, or temporarily have network-manager installed,
> risk being exposed to bugs in network-manager's configuration
> arrangements, and so on.
>
If it makes the life of the GNOME maintainers easier to just
release-note this, why not let them do so? Few systems running gnome
and NM will be remote systems where disabling NM is hard.
Or even if you think that's not enough, why dictate how the gnome
maintainers solve the problem rather than saying «fix so people can do
A, B, C in a reasonable manner»?
[...]
> 6. The Technical Committee overrules the decision of the gnome-core
> metapackage maintainer. The dependency from gnome-core to
> network-manager-gnome should be downgraded to Recommends.
I think this would be unwise. I think you're risking upsetting the
gnome maintainers enough that they'll lose motivation and we'll end up
with a worse maintained gnome in wheezy and onwards; that's at least the
feeling I have from how the conversation has gone on the lists, etc.
I'm not involved in the GNOME packaging myself, so I am in no way
speaking on behalf of them.
--
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are
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