Subject: Re: [gnome-team] What should we do with the "gnome" package?

From: Liliana Marie Prikler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2023 08:34:28 +0100

Hi Vivien,

Am Dienstag, dem 05.12.2023 um 21:55 +0100 schrieb Vivien Kraus:
> Dear guix,
> 
> On the one hand, we have this list of packages:
> https://ftp2.nluug.nl/windowing/gnome/teams/releng/44.6/versions
> 
> On the other hand, we have the propagated-inputs of the gnome
> package.
> 
> Should we update the latter so that it contains everything from the
> former? 
No.

> What should we do about the comments dividing the propagated-
> inputs into categories? Where do these categories come from? 
The categories are roughly inferred from a previous categorisation of
GNOME Apps.  It is a little arcane and should probably be updated to
reflect <https://apps.gnome.org/de/#core> (roughly).  Note that we'll
still be using the Core Apps from GNOME 44, which are listed in [1].
 
> Should we preserve them? How do we know which package goes to which
> category?
We should try to update them and better keep with upstream terms.  I
think it also makes sense to split the gnome meta-package into multiple
meta packages and adjust the gnome-desktop service accordingly.  For
one, we do need a gnome-shell-meta that has everything required to get
a running gnome-shell, even without any of the other core applications.
Then, gnome-core-main, gnome-core-mobile and gnome-core-tools could
hold the main, mobile and developer tools in the core apps
respectively.

> The gnome package disables eog on 32-bit machines because it depends
> on librsvg-next. It seems a bit outdated to me, as most of gnome
> won’t work on 32-bit machines, not only eog. Should we try and find
> which ones work on 32-bit systems?
Seeing how GNOME 45 deprecates eog in favour of loupe, yet another
bootstrap and build system nightmare, we should anyhow look into what's
buildable on 32-bit machines and offer suitable replacements.  I'm very
much a proponent of reducing the amount of software on our GNOME stack,
not piling yet another heap of checksums onto it and calling dependency
management done.

Cheers

[1] https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2023/05/10/gnome-core-apps-update/