Re: Debianizing Debian's GNOME/KDE a bit more]

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org>]

On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 08:15:10PM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
 > <quote who="Gustavo Noronha Silva">
 > 
 > > That's to say that making desktop-base a "preference" will make
 > > things quite more complicated for the Debian Desktop project, and
 > > will have no real benefits for the user. Let's make our design
 > > decisions and tag the bugs 'wontfix'.
 > 
 > You could route around this damage by making 'gnome-core' depend on
 > desktop-base. :-)

 That's nice, but doesn't solve the problem: how do pass this setting to
 gnome-session?  You basically have two choices:

    * You modify /usr/share/pixmaps/splash/gnome-splash.png

      More specifically, you _divert_ this file.  Forget about using
      alternatives.  This is not an alternative.  Alternatives are for
      things where a good default exists or can be chosen, but there are
      other implementations that are as good for some users.  A terminal
      emulator for example.  If users want to customize their splash
      image, they are welcomed to do so.  If system administrators want
      to customize their splash images, they are welcome to do so, too.

      Specificlally:

        GNOME_SPLASH=/usr/share/pixmaps/splash/gnome-splash.png
        DIVERSION=/usr/share/pixmaps/splash/gnome-splash-upstream.png
        DEBIAN_SPLASH=/.../debian-splash.png

        dpkg-divert
            --package desktop-base \
            --divert $DIVERSION \
            --add ${GNOME_SPLASH}

        if [ -f ${GNOME_SPLASH} ] ; then
            if [ ! -f $DIVERSION ] ; then
                mv ${GNOME_SPLASH} $DIVERSION
            else
                # Something's gone south here, reboot universe
            fi
        fi

        if [ ! -l ${GNOME_SPLASH} ] ; then
            ln -sf ${DEBIAN_SPLASH} ${GNOME_SPLASH}
        fi

      Needless to say, that logic is not complete and it might even be
      flawed, but I hope you can see the forest instead of the trees.

    * You modify gnome-session's schema file to point elsewhere

      In particular, you use another file, e.g. /.../debian-splash.png
      and modify the schema file accordingly.  If you do this,
      gnome-session has to have a dependency on desktop-base because
      it'd be using a file from that package.  Hiding the dependency
      elsewhere is wrong.

 Personally I prefer the second option because it's simple.  Simplicity
 is beauty.  The desktop-base maintainer doesn't have to chase changes
 he doesn't care about in packages that are not his.

 HTH,

 Marcelo