Re: Debian GNOME Policy, Mark II

[Jeff Waugh <jdub@perkypants.org>]

<quote who="Colin Walters">

> I was thinking about my fontilus package today, and I realized that at
> least conceptually, the GNOME VFS method could be used without nautilus
> and such.

> What do you guys think?

So, I find myself telling people about obscure packages that have really
useful stuff in them all the time due to the new popularity for finely
granular packaging.

So, a user has no idea what a gnome-vfs method is, and rightly so. It just
happens to be something they can use/see all the time. I would tentatively
agree that there is a good technical reason for granularity here (what if
you want to ship just the gnome-vfs method on a pda for instance), but two
things would make me shy away from it:

  1) maintenance cost for packagers (if you're willing to handle it, or it's
     done automagically or something, great)

  2) user understanding and expectation -> how will the user find these, why
     do they need to understand their relevance, and if they don't (I would
     strongly suggest that vfs methods are far too obscure and technical for
     any user, skilled or not), how are they going to be magically installed
     to satisfy the needs of any user that will want the functionality?

Sure, it would make sense to depend on it when installing the GNOME
control-center (it will be updated to understand fontilus in 2.4). ;-)

- Jeff

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