hi.
Keith and I hashed out proposed changes to option D on IRC.
Unless there are significant concerns raised by TC members, I plan to
call for votes on the following ballot next Tuesday.
Whereas:
1. The Debian Policy Manual states (§9.6) that 'The Debian menu
package provides a standard interface between packages providing
applications and "menu programs"'. It further states that 'All
packages that provide applications that need not be passed any
special command line arguments for normal operations should
register a menu entry for those applications'.
2. All details about menu system requirement are delegated to the
Debian Menu sub-policy and Debian Menu System manuals (the
"Debian menu system").
3. An external specification, the Freedesktop Desktop Entry
Specification (the ".desktop spec"), with native support in many
X desktop environments, has appeared since the Debian Menu
system was developed. The .desktop spec offers a fairly strict
super-set of Debian Menu system functionality.
4. The .desktop specification has significant technical benefits
for users over the Debian menu system. The .desktop
specification works together with the freedesktop.org mime type
and icon specifications to provide operations expected by
desktop users from other environments, such as Mac OS X or
Windows. As such, applications must provide a .desktop file to
operate well in most desktop environments.
5. The Debian Technical Committee has been asked to resolve a
dispute between maintainers of Debian Policy over a change that
i. incorporates the description of the FreeDesktop menu system
and its use in Debian for listing program in desktop menus
and associating them with media types
ii. softens the wording on the Debian Menu system to reflect that
in Jessie it will be neither displayed nor installed by
default on standard Debian installations.
Therefore:
OPTION A:
1. The Technical Committee adopts the changes proposed by Charles
Plessy in ba679bff[1].
2. Further modifications to the menu policy are allowed using the
normal policy modification process.
[1]: http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/dbnpolicy/policy.git/commit/?id=ba679bff76f5b9152f43d5bc901b9b3aad257479
Using its power under §6.1.5 to offer advice:
1. The Technical Committee suggests that the maintainers of the
Debian menu package support translating .desktop files of
packages which do not provide menu files.
OPTION B:
1. Considers that the policy procedure resulted in consensus, and
adopts the changes proposed by Charles Plessy in ba67bff.[1]
2. Further modifications to the menu policy are allowed using the
normal policy modification process.
[1]: http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/dbnpolicy/policy.git/commit/?id=ba679bff76f5b9152f43d5bc901b9b3aad257479
Using its power under §6.1.5 to offer advice:
1. The Technical Committee suggests that the maintainers of the
Debian menu package support translating .desktop files of
packages which do not provide menu files.
OPTION C:
1. The Technical Committee adopts the changes proposed by Bill
Allombert.[1]
2. Further modifications to the menu policy are allowed using the
normal policy modification process.
[1]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?att=1;filename=patch2;bug=707851;msg=446
OPTION D:
The Technical Committee has reviewed the underlying technical
issues around this question and has resolved that Debian will be
best served by migrating away from our own Debian Menu System and
towards the common Freedesktop Desktop Entry Specification, and
that menu information for applications should not be duplicated in
two different formats.
To encouage this change, we make menu files optional, ask that
packages include .desktop files as appropriate and prohibit
packages from providing both menu and .desktop files for the same
application.
Using its power under §6.1.1 to decide on any matter of technical
policy, and its power under §6.1.5 to offer advice:
1. The Technical Committee resolves that packages which provide
applications customarily designed for use within a desktop
environment should provide a .desktop file conforming to the
Freedesktop Desktop Entry Specification.
2. Packages may provide menu files at the pleasure of the
maintainer, but packages providing a .desktop file shall not
also provide a menu file for the same application.
3. We further resolve that "menu programs" should not depend on the
Debian Menu System and should instead rely on .desktop file
contents for constructing a list of applications to present to
the user.
4. We advise the maintainers of the 'menu' package to update that
package to reflect this increased focus on .desktop files by
modifying the 'menu' package to use .desktop files for the
source of menu information in addition to menu files.
5. Discussion of the precise relationship between menu file
section/hints values and .desktop file Categories values may be
defined within the Debian Menu sub-policy and Debian Menu
System.
6. The policy change by Charles Plessy in ba679bff76[1]
would comply with this decision if it were revised to require
that no package provide a menu file when it provides a .desktop
file for the same application.
7. Further modifications to the menu policy are allowed using the
normal policy modification process.
[1]: http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/dbnpolicy/policy.git/commit/?id=ba679bff76f5b9152f43d5bc901b9b3aad257479
OPTION Z:
Further discussion
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