Bug#688772: gnome Depends network-manager-gnome
Hi Don,
Le vendredi 05 octobre 2012 à 11:36 -0700, Don Armstrong a écrit :
> On Thu, 27 Sep 2012, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> > Recommends are not enough to ensure that packages are installed,
> > especially upon upgrades. For example regarding NM, we definitely
> > *want* people who upgrade from squeeze to get NM installed.
>
> What is still missing is the technical rationale for this desire. If
> there were specific technical reason(s) why everyone who uses gnome
> should have NM installed, then it would weigh more for forcing NM to
> be installed if the gnome meta package was installed.
The reason is that GNOME includes NM. Just like it includes gnome-shell
or whatever module. It’s not just an upstream decision: GNOME without NM
is a stripped down GNOME, with reduced functionality in many modules. We
consider GNOME as a tightly integrated environment, with components made
to work together. The metapackages are here to install this integrated
environment (which, despite that, differs from upstream on other
matters), and not just some random set of packages.
The code that makes it actually *work* without NM installed was added
for kFreeBSD – incidentally, by the same NM maintainer whose work has
been repeatedly thrown into mud in the discussions. His intent was
certainly not to give people an excuse to cripple down the Linux ports.
We do not consider this requirement to be optional on architectures
where it can be satisfied.
> From what I know so far, the primary rationale appears to be that
> gnome upstream considers NM part of gnome, and so it should be
> installed. I believe the CTTE addressed this rationale in §2 of the
> decision. We decided that unacceptable upgrade behavior outweighed
> this, as outlined in §5 and §6.
I disagree with the contents of §5 and §6. The release notes are here
precisely for this kind of cases. The reason why NM was only optional is
that historically (in lenny and before) it was buggy and wrongly
designed; which no longer applies.
The resolution also doesn’t mention which problems upgrading from a
squeeze system without NM to a wheezy system with NM causes. The cases
for potential breakage are rare (if they exist at all), and
administrators of systems with complicated network setups have all
reasons to read the release notes before upgrading blindly.
For these reasons, I consider resolution #681834 to be driven by
religious motives rather than technical ones, and that it was conducted
in haste. I have not said anything so far because the wording allows
(and again, I thought this was intentional) for the compromise to move
the dependency to the gnome package. But if people from either side
start questioning this compromise, I am afraid they are going to do a
lot of harm to the project.
Cheers,
--
.''`. Josselin Mouette
: :' :
`. `'
`-
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