Bug#688772: gnome Depends network-manager-gnome
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> Russ Allbery writes ("Bug#688772: gnome Depends network-manager-gnome"):
>> Whether or not one agrees with that reason, I do think it's cogent and
>> goes directly to the point, namely upgrade behavior.
> Do you think it's a good reason, in the case of n-m ?
I'm hesitant to express a strong opinion. I can see good arguments for
both sides. The way in which integration of components in GNOME is done
has changed considerably in GNOME 3 as I understand it, and wicd does not
integrate well with the new way of doing integration. The behavior of n-m
with statically-configured local networks has also improved considerably,
according to various discussion in this thread.
Having n-m take over from wicd during an upgrade is still awkward.
However, it's not at all clear that the reasons why I, at least, switched
to wicd when I was using GNOME would still apply, so it's possible that
many users will now be better off with n-m again.
All that weighs against what I think is a fairly compelling case for using
Recommends in metapackages.
I'm feeling particularly sensitive to the fact that I personally don't use
the software involved, in part because I prefer a different philosophical
approach to assembling my desktop, and therefore the reasons why I might
make decisions about components are not necessarily in the spirit of
GNOME.
That's the reason why I'm inclined to try to stay out of the decision as
much as possible and leave it to the GNOME maintainers, who know
considerably more about the system than I do. While the current situation
is not the compromise that I would have proposed, it does feel like a
workable compromise (in conjunction with release notes), and I do think
it's valuable to compromise some in situations like this.
The tension in the discussion is making it very hard to hold that
position. People on all sides of this discussion seem to be pushing it
towards becoming a referendum on the legitimacy of the Technical Committee
rather than a method for arriving at the best all-around compromise for
both GNOME users and the project, and that's making me really
uncomfortable.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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