Bug#1030683: gnome-shell-extensions-extra: unmaintainable
Source: gnome-shell-extensions-extra
Version: 20230205-2
Severity: serious
Justification: unsupportable
Tags: sid bookworm
X-Debbugs-CC: debian-gtk-gnome@lists.debian.org
gnome-shell-extensions-extra is a new collection of 6 different source
packages bundled into a single source package with a single binary
package.
- There is no upstream that bundles these extensions together like this.
- There is no unifying theme for why these extensions are included and
why others are not included, except perhaps these extensions are
useful to the Maintainer.
- It is not possible to use apt to determine the upstream version
number for these extensions.
- It is not possible to use uscan to check for new upstream releases
- It is not easily possible for the Security Team to determine whether
security bugs and fixes apply to this package.
- There is a namespace concern. Since the GNOME project officially
maintains something called "gnome-shell-extensions", it is possible
they may eventually produce something called
"gnome-shell-extensions-extra" as they have done with
"gnome-themes-extra".
- Twice per year, GNOME releases a new major version of GNOME Shell
which breaks all GNOME Shell extensions until they are manually
updated for the new release. It upsets users when their packaged GNOME
Shell extensions silently no longer work because of a GNOME Shell
update. Therefore, the Debian GNOME team has a best practice of
specifying the GNOME Shell versions an extension works with, in the
package dependencies set in debian/control for each extension so that
apt will warn the user of extensions that are not compatible yet with
the new release.
I personally verified that this was in place for all the independently
packaged extensions in Debian Testing for the GNOME 44 release. This
package does not have these relations in debian/control and cannot.
This becomes an unmaintainable mess when a new major GNOME Shell
version is prepared for Debian Unstable.
I am initially filing this bug as Serious because I believe the
current packaging is unsupportable and violates paragraph 5(a) of
https://release.debian.org/testing/rc_policy.txt
On behalf of the Debian GNOME team,
Jeremy Bícha
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