Hi, The Debian GNOME team is well aware of the discussion regarding #688772, which unfortunately went down an unconstructive path. As such we thought it best to step back for a little bit to try and formulate our position more clearly and see if we could find a constructive way to get out of this mess. Luckily the last few mails on the thread by Don Armstrong and Michael Biebl already showed there was some light at the end of the tunnel :) First of all, we want to make clear that the position Joss has been defending on this exhausting thread is shared by most, if not all, of the Debian GNOME team members. In other words, we all consider NM an important and integral part of the desktop system we're delivering, and its absence does degrade its operation in such a way we find inacceptable. It is worth to point out that GNOME 3 as we will get in wheezy is a big departure from the GNOME 2 as delivered in lenny. Among other things GNOME now strives for a tightly integrated desktop, with NM being a core part of this desktop. In the opinion of the GNOME team the intended GNOME experience can only be delivered when all these tightly integrated parts are used together. Network manager is not an arbitrary requirement, even if GNOME Shell can currently run without it. NetworkManager allows GNOME to: - access all present and commonly used networking technologies (VPN, Wireless, 3G) via an integrated, very prominent icon in the main desktop bar. - networking needs have changed over the past years and has become much more dynamic and diverse. Connecting to the internet via wireless, 3G or VPN should be painless and easy. It should work out of the box and require a minimum of fuss. - only NetworkManager currently offers this kind of features, ifupdown is too static/cumbersome to setup, wicd is too limited in functionality. - GNOME upstream developers embraced NetworkManager as an external dependency and seamlessly integrated them into various parts of the desktop. better integration / software being network-aware ================================================= - on/offline detection: GNOME relies on NetworkManager's D-Bus messages to establish if the system has a working network connection or not, and how to behave in either case. Applications like Evolution or Empathy will only try to fetch mail if NM says there's an appropriate network link, avoiding errors like "Could not connect to IMAP server". Epiphany will enable offline mode automatically, etc. - PackageKit will avoid costly downloads when you're on 3G setting up new connections is easy - integration into gnome-control-center - setting up a new wireless connection requires a single click via prominent integration into GNOME Shell upgrade problem =============== - NetworkManager was first introduced in lenny, the first release installing recommends by default. - network-manager-gnome was added a Recommends to the "gnome" meta-package in lenny. - misuse of Recommends was a widespread problem in lenny, so quite a few users disabled Recommends back then. - NetworkManager 0.6 in lenny was very limited, e.g. only supported DHCP. It is not comparable with the version we ship in wheezy. NetworkManager and static interface configurations ================================================== Some of the concerns raised in the discussion revolve about the possibility of NetworkManager starting in the middle of an upgrade and taking over a statically configured interface in /etc/network/interfaces. We don't think there's much discussion about that: if that happens, it's a critical RC bug that needs to be fixed. The same already applies to regressions network drivers in the kernel, libc6 or other basic core components which could break a remote Debian dist-upgrade. multiple connection managers problem ==================================== One of the real issues when NM is a Depend of the meta-packages is that it violated the principle of "do no harm" when being installed on a system which already has a connection manager (such as wicd or less commonly connman). While this is not a problem specific to NM (installing wicd on an NM system causes the same problem), the problem is of course triggered by the Depend in the gnome meta package. Solving this issue properly will not only make the biggest issues seen with gnome depending on NM go away, but will also improve Debian as a whole, which is of course always worthwhile. The best solution we can currently propose for this issue is to add some maintainer script logic to present a debconf prompt (similar to how we currently manage multiple display managers like gdm and kdm which can be installed at the same time). To avoid unnecessary debconf prompts, the debconf prompt would only be shown if such a "conflict" situation is detected. Michael has done a proof of concept implementation [1] which is one step in that direction, by simply having NM provide a prompt when it detects that the wicd binary is installed. A more full implemenation would of course require modifications to the wicd package (and connman) as well. If the details of the technical implementation of this solution aren't considered out of scope for this bug report and the CTTE, we are happy to discuss a more detailed plan. On behalf of the Debian GNOME team, Jordi Mallach Sjoerd Simons Michael Biebl [1] http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-utopia/network-manager.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/wip/debconf -- Jordi Mallach Pérez -- Debian developer http://www.debian.org/ jordi@sindominio.net jordi@debian.org http://www.sindominio.net/ GnuPG public key information available at http://oskuro.net/
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature