Bug#460504: dh_desktop/dh_icons madness

[Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>]

Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Debian has always been about integration. Don’t you register your
> documentation with doc-base so that your application integrates with
> centralized documentation systems?

I'm glad you bring up this comparison, but this is different.  If someone 
neglects to do doc-base registration, his package's documentation won't be 
usable in a nice way.  That directly affects the functionality of that 
package.  If someone doesn't do dh_icons or dh_desktop registration, nothing 
changes for that package.  It affects only users of whatever environment it 
is that appears to require this.

> It is not a random user environment. It is the accepted standard for the
> three main desktops we are shipping.

I assume you are talking about GNOME, Xfce, and KDE here.  KDE doesn't do any 
of this, so have doubts about the "accepted standard".  It seems silly to 
request all KDE-related packages to jump through hoops so they work with 
GNOME.

> Is it the desktop environment’s or the package’s own functional benefit
> to have the application launched when you click on a file of the related
> type, or to have a visible icon? This is merely a philosophical
> question.

It is to the desktop environment's benefit.  The package will work fine in 
other environments.  To pick a concrete example (bug #460449), if a GNOME 
user clicks on a kdissert file and things don't work, while they work just 
fine in KDE, then that is GNOME's problem, not kdissert's.

> I thought dpkg triggers had been sufficiently advertised, but it seems
> the mails haven’t reached the (deep ?) place you are living in.

They indeed haven't, but since they appear to have reached the (shallow ?) 
place you are living in, why not use them?