Bug#707851: Debian Menu Systems : Implementation of the TC decision

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

(Obviously whenever you say you are out of a discussion or will not
 reply anymore there's some compelling reason to do otherwise…)

On Tue, 2015-09-29 at 18:05:02 +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> wrote: 
>         You seem to be framing this as a XDG vs menu formats. I see it in great
>         part as applications showing up on WM/DE or not. The collateral damage
>         from the TC decision are applications, WM/DE and its users from either
>         format.
> 
> Only if WMs keep on using the Debian menu instead of the XDG menu.
> 
>         Err, no, the TC has explicitly made it "impossible" for the two systems
>         to coexist, breaking existing support, and forcing maintainers to choose
>         one or other ecosystems, w/o any working solution in sight for WM/DE not
>         supporting the XDG system. Which has made the situation even worse than
>         before, in a very anti social way.
> 
> You might want to package https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xdg-menu
> which answers exactly the questions you have been asking.

Then you've completely missed the points in my mails. But to try to make
it excruciatingly clear:

 * No one has offered themselves to package, maintain and do any required
   global integration work, any of the times (AFAIK) the above project
   has been mentioned on the mailing lists. The one that came "closer"
   was Charles Plessy on d-d? (#749565)
 * I don't have any problem with the XDG menu spec (I do think it *is*
   fine, but this is besides the point here).
 * I don't see why I should be held responsible to fix the mess that
   others have inflicted onto the project, just for pointing it out.
 * This is about how a very poor mandate puts well meaning maintainers
   in a bind when having to choose between one or the other system, when
   they or their users do not use any of the XDG-enabled environments.
   (If I maintained a package with both menu and XDG entries, while most
   WM/DE do not support XDG entries, I'd probably ignore the TC mandate
   to only ship one entry, as being complete rubbish towards our users).
 * This is about users suddenly missing out on already done work and
   information that was previously there, due to well meaning maintainers
   being forced to remove support for one or the other entries, which by
   my reading is strictly permitted by the TC resolution.
 * This is about very poor transition planning in general, based on
   untested solutions and work no one has even promised to do.
 * This is about the TC yet again failing on §6.3.5.
 * This is about this sad trend in some quarters of the project to try
   to direct it by force instead of by convincing arguments, superior
   solutions, effort or simply working code.

Regards,
Guillem