Re: Bug#727708: init system other points, and conclusion

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

On Wed, Jan 01, 2014 at 03:40:17PM -0500, Chris Knadle wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 01, 2014 08:47:13 Josh Triplett wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 01, 2014 at 08:09:56AM -0500, Chris Knadle wrote:
> > > On Tuesday, December 31, 2013 20:12:20 Josh Triplett wrote:
> > > > Steve Langasek wrote:
> > > > >On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 09:13:52PM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> > > > >> So unless the TC wants to remove a great number of packages from the
> > > > >> archive, you need to take into account the fact that some voluntary
> > > > >> manpower is required to implement your decision.
> > > > > 
> > > > > I think the current Debian GNOME team has a not-undeserved reputation
> > > > > for
> > > > > being obstructionist with respect to bugfixes that require divergence
> > > > > from
> > > > > upstream's stated direction.  If the team demonstrated they were open
> > > > > to
> > > > > contributions of the kind you described, volunteers to do the work
> > > > > would
> > > > > not be hard to come by.
> > > > 
> > > > That's an impressively high amount of doublespeak packed into a single
> > > > paragraph, particularly the words "bugfixes", "volunteers", and
> > > > "contributions".  At a minimum, I think you're overstating the situation
> > > > by refusing to acknowledge that the GNOME team does not consider the
> > > > changes forced upon them to be "bugfixes".
> > > 
> > > Responding specifically to this:
> > > > You (and other members of the TC) disliked GNOME's requirement of
> > > > NetworkManager, for reasons I still have yet to see explained coherently
> > > > anywhere.  You forced the GNOME team to remove it.  I certainly hope
> > > > you find "volunteers" willing to do that kind of work increasingly hard
> > > > to come by.
> > > 
> > > Re: dependency removal -- sort of.  The reasoning is explained  for the
> > > most part in the tech-ctte decision for #681834. [1]  But just to fully
> > > make this clear I'll also provide a brief summary of what I think
> > > happened at the time.
> > [...snip explanation...]
> > 
> > I appreciate the explanation, and I'm familiar with the contents of the
> > decision.  I simply see nothing there that should have motivated a
> > tech-ctte decision, rather than simply a couple of bug reports against
> > network-manager and an added Conflicts/Breaks or two.
> 
> In other words, what you're saying is that not only is there no problem that 
> the GNOME maintainers mandated that I get NetworkManager, which I personally 
> most certainly don't want, but that the tech-ctte should have made a ruling 
> that would have forced users to uninstall wicd too.  :-/  Not cool.

It's fairly clear that NetworkManager and wicd conflict, so having a
proper Conflicts or Breaks so that apt can inform you of that seems
preferable to having the two packages both installed and trying to
manage networking.  Even in the current situation, that conflict ought
to exist, since the two packages can't coexist and shouldn't be expected
to.

As for GNOME requiring NetworkManager, GNOME also requires mutter these
days as part of gnome-shell, and doesn't work with other window
managers, and I don't expect GNOME to support configurations attempting
to replace its window manager either.  Likewise you can't replace
dconf/gsettings, or gnome-panel.  With enough patching you probably
could, just as with the current pile of patches it manages to run
without NetworkManager, but that doesn't mean it *should*.  In other
news, http://islinuxaboutchoice.com/ .  I expect to see GNOME making
quite a few more upstream requirements in the future as it continues to
try to make more aspects of system configuration Just Work, and I'd very
much like to see those requirements properly represented in Debian as
dependencies.

But no, I don't think the tech-ctte should have made a ruling that would
have forced users to unstall wicd; I think they simply should have
declined to rule on the situation.

- Josh Triplett