Hi Charles, and thanks for your feedback, Le lundi, 17 août 2015, 21.25:59 Charles Plessy a écrit : > I think that option D has two fundamental flaws and I would like to > recommend the TC against voting for it. > > * First, if it is voted, nothing will happen. > > If the TC adopts option D, and if the maintainer (no plural) of the > 'menu' package decides to not follow point 3's recommendation, what > will be the practical difference between option D and option Z ? I disagree with this, because of the last sentence of D1, put in force using §6.1.1 (decide on any matter of technical policy): "Applications providing a .desktop file should not provide a Debian menu file." This will allow maintainers that _do_ provide .desktop files to stop providing .menu files as well. > I voiced this concern in 2014 (741573#450), but got no answer. Who do > you expect to do the work ? Either the 'menu' maintainer and/or anyone sufficiently interested in keeping said system relevant. With D1 in place, I expect .menu files to start disappearing from the archive at a good pace; it will become somewhat urgent for those relying on the menu system to work towards having this .desktop-to-menu translation infrastructure in place. > The reason I ask is that option D carries nothing new. In 2008, we > already had a discussion which outcome was very similar to what is > proposed in option D. > > https://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries I think it is quite reasonable to assume that Keith's proposal is a derivative of that proposal. > * Second, it does not solve the problem that I sumbitted to the TC. The TC is currently trying to decide whether to decide on the conflict (AB vs C) or to decide on the 'menu' matter of technical policy (D). I honestly think all 4 options would resolve the "unresolvable conflict" that you referred to the TC. > See in particular Josselin's objection in 741573#405 and Keith's > answer: > > > One of the problems I have with your proposal, compared to > > Charles’ original patch, is that it encourages maintainers of > > hundreds of (IMHO useless) menu files to port them to the desktop > > format. I agree that the current proposition doesn't address this problem in D1, in that it says: > packages for which the Debian menu system currently applies should > provide a .desktop file One key word is "currently" in there. I think it is reasonable to read this as "run 's/register a menu entry/provide a FreeDesktop .desktop file/g' over Policy §9.6". It would certainly not prevent further changes to §9.6 as long as the TC decision is respected. From what I understand of your opposition, you're afraid that further discussions around softening the "all packages that provide applications that need not be passed any special command line arguments for normal operation should provide a FreeDesktop .desktop file entry for those application" part would be met with unresolvable opposition from Bill, right? What about the following formulation then (not yet entirely convinced, but I hope that's a step forward)? > 1. The Technical Committee resolves that applications providing a > .desktop file should not provide a Debian menu file. This would delegate the decision on which applications are supposed to provide a .desktop file to (arguably yet another) the Debian Policy process. Cheers, OdyX
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.