Re: Recommends for metapackages

[Bjørn Mork <bjorn@mork.no>]

Jean-Christophe Dubacq <jcdubacq1@free.fr> writes:
> On 11/07/2012 11:12, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>> On Mi, 11 iul 12, 10:55:16, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>>>
>>> The feature of _allowing a subset of packages to be removed that was 
>>> _ensured_ to be installed: Impossible without defeating the feature of 
>>> _ensuring_ those same package are installed.
>> 
>> Agreed. However, unless I missed something I haven't seen any arguments 
>> for why gnome-core really needs to _ensure_ that network-manager-gnome 
>> is installed, other than "upgrade issues" without any other details.
>
> If my memory does not fail me, support from upstream (since
> network-manager is a core component of Gnome). I may be wrong.

That must be an upstream *Gnome* bug then.  But it is most certainly a
bug.  Network Manager is not intended as an one-size-fits-all
application.

I have never been a great fan of Network Manager, but for various
reasons I've taken some time to actually get to know it lately. And that
has been enlightening. Turns out that it works really well for the use
cases it supports, and it isn't *meant* to be used for every possible
use case.  Contrary to what you would be led to believe by the strict
Gnome dependency.

I do recommend everybody, especially the Debian Gnome maintainers, to
read what Dan Williams said here yesterday:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/networkmanager-list/2012-July/msg00168.html

<quote>
Instead, I believe our goal is to make NM useful enough, easy enough,
and understandable enough, that people *want* to use NM rather than
wading through a bunch of scripts.  We don't want to force NM upon
people; instead we need to make NM *better* than the existing options so
that it's a no-brainer choice.  There will always be people that want to
tinker and do something else or have so totally crack-rock use-cases
that we have no hope of easily supporting them, and that's fine.  That's
what software is about.
Instead, I believe our goal is to make NM useful enough, easy enough,
and understandable enough, that people *want* to use NM rather than
wading through a bunch of scripts.  We don't want to force NM upon
people; instead we need to make NM *better* than the existing options so
that it's a no-brainer choice.  There will always be people that want to
tinker and do something else or have so totally crack-rock use-cases
that we have no hope of easily supporting them, and that's fine.  That's
what software is about.
</quote>

I just wish every piece of software was based on a philosophy like that.


Bjørn