Re: Debian Policy 4.0.1.0 released
Didier 'OdyX' Raboud writes ("Re: Debian Policy 4.0.1.0 released"):
> One "proper transition plan" has been proposed, and there was no
> visible result in almost two years; it's certainly sad
> that`xdg-menu` (from Arch, see [1]) has not been packaged; nor did
> our very own `menu` [2] receive enough love.
That "proper transition plan" did not preserve the existing Debian
trad menu metadata, which is necessary to preserve the existing menu
structures. Any transition plan which did that based on xdg files
would be quite horrible because it would involve mixing, in a single
file, data maintained by the trad Debian menu folks with data
maintained by the XDG folks.
> The other recourse was (well, still is) a GR, which hasn't happened either.
Guillem, if you propose a GR to overrule the TC, I will second it.
> As I wrote back then [3] (and I haven't changed my mind) :
> > the burden of keeping the trad-menu relevant would be (IMHO correctly) put
> > on people who care about it, instead of leaving it on all package
> > maintainers through the Debian Policy.
The burden was simply of accepting patches to provide the Debian trad
menu file. These patches are tiny and no maintenance burden.
As I said during the TC discussion: no-one is proposing that
maintainers should be forced to actively write trad Debian menu
entires. All that was being asked is that maintainers of packages
should accept patches to add trad Debian menu entries.
> The next step is that this policy change is likely to find its way
> as a Lintian warning (or error). But we're still _very_ far from
> mass bug reports, without even talking about their severity (and
> several TC members indicated they were against 'serious' severity).
Well there is of course a nuclear option. I don't have the effort for
this, but, the nuclear option for trad Debian menu supporters would be
to:
* Package xdg-menu-convert but provide it with a mechanism that allows
a menu item to be placed differently in the xdg menu taxonomy to in
the trad taxonomy.
* Find example packages which currently provide xdg desktop files but
no trad menu file, and for which there was a rejected bug report
containing a trad menu file. (Best for packages which used to have
a trad menu file.)
* For each such example package, run xdg-menu-convert on the xdg
desktop file. Compare the xdg desktop file generated trad entry
with the previous trad entry, from the patch. Send a patch to
modify the package's xdg desktop file entry to contain the
Debian-specific fields to restore the Debian trad menu entry.
* When the patch in the previous paragraph is rejected go back to the
TC and have another flamewar.
This is, of course, the only way that the many years worth of work, of
constructing the Debian menu system taxonomy and menu titles and so
on, can be preserved.
Ian.
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