Re: Bug#681834: network-manager, gnome, Recommends vs Depends
]] Russ Allbery
Hi,
> Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
>
> > How about this:
>
> This doesn't feel quite right to me, but I'm not sure how to phrase my
> feeling in terms of specific objections. Let me try to instead draft the
> sort of statement that I feel like I want to make and see what people
> think of it.
This looks like a much better statement than the previous one, but I'd
still like to nitpick a little bit.
> The gnome-core metapackage is intended to reflect the core of the
> GNOME desktop environment: the basic tools and subsystems that
> together constitute GNOME. The gnome metapackage is intended to
> reflect the broader desktop environment, including extra components
> and applications.
gnome-core is also the same as the official core modules of the GNOME
desktop, as listed in the description.
I'm questioning whether it's appropriate for the CTTE to decide that the
purpose of a metapackage is something else than what the maintainer
decides it is.
[...]
> In squeeze, the gnome metapackage lists network-manager in Recommends
> but not Depends. In wheezy, currently, network-manager has moved from
> gnome to gnome-core, and from Recommends to Depends. This represents
> a substantially increased insistance that users of the GNOME
> metapackages have network-manager installed. This change is, so far
> as the Technical Committee understands, driven primarily by user
> confusion and bug reports, but does not reflect a deeper or tighter
> integration of network-manager into GNOME than was the case in
> squeeze.
It was also taken into core upstream, compare
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/teams/releng/3.4.1/versions with
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/teams/releng/2.30.2/versions and so it
makes sense for the package whose primary purpose is to contain the
selections from upstream to actually include NM.
> If matters are left as they currently stand, users who have the gnome
> metapackages installed but do not have network-manager installed will,
> in the process of upgrading from squeeze to wheezy (either due to an
> explicit decision to remove it or an implicit decision to not install
> it by disabling automatic installation of Recommends), end up
> installing network-manager on systems where it is currently not
> installed. It will also no longer be possible for users to install
> GNOME metapackages in wheezy without installing network-manager.
This is incorrect, you can still install the gnome-session metapackage,
which is what the GNOME packagers have repeatedly stated that people who
want a minimal GNOME desktop and finer package selection should
install.
> For most applications and components, the only drawback of this would
> be some additional disk space usage, since the application, despite
> being installed, wouldn't need to be used. However, network-manager
> assumes that, if it is installed, it should attempt to manage the
> system's network configuration. It attempts to avoid overriding local
> manual configuration, but it isn't able to detect all cases where the
> user is using some other component or system to manage networking.
This sounds like a regular bug that should just be fixed. I've seen
this repeated here and there, but I haven't seen references to
still-open bugs.
[...]
> Please note that this is not a general statement about GNOME
> components. It is very specific to network-manager because all of the
> following apply:
>
> 1. The package takes action automatically because it is installed,
> rather than being a component that can either be run or not at the
> user's choice.
Like most all daemons in Debian? :-)
> 2. The package has historically been recommended rather than listed as
> a dependency, so existing Debian users are used to that behavior.
Upstream's changed, which is usually considered a decent enough
rationale.
> 3. There is both demonstrable, intentional widespread replacement of
> that package by Debian GNOME users and no significant loss of
> unrelated GNOME desktop functionality by replacing it with a
> different component.
So if they cripple the GNOME apps to actually require NM, the dependency
would be fine? This sounds like a perverse incentive.
I think you should take into consideration that the GNOME maintainers
have offered interested parties the option of maintaining a
gnome-core-without-nm package in the pkg-gnome repository. Somebody who
cares would have to do that work, though, and I did not see anybody
stepping forward to do so, so perhaps the demand isn't actually that
large?
Cheers,
--
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are
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