Hi.

So far gvfs-backends contained only (more or less) vendor-neutral stuff.
-CDDA stuff
-BT
-compressed archievs
-gphoto (which at least supports many vendors/products)
-SMB (ok MS, but it's at least a "standardised" net-fs)


Now with the dependencie on libmobiledevice0 we get the first
vendor/product specific dependency.
Although this is already very ugly (by far not everybody has any Apple
iCrap)
what really annoys is the indirect dependency on a deamon (usbmuxd),
which
itself is also iCrap-specific.

At least it seems that it only starts when iCrap is detected but
nevertheless,
I suggest to put such strongly vendor-dependent stuff into a separate
package, e.g. gvfs-extra-backends, or even single packages like
gvfs-apple

Cheers,
Chris.

Le vendredi 09 avril 2010 à 13:41 +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer a
écrit :

As long as it is only started when you plug such a device, I don’t see
where the problem is.

We have lots of vendor-specific backends in existing packages (ses e.g.
the kernel), and lots of vendor-specific packages which are installed by
default: xserver-xorg-video-radeon, hpijs-ppds…

You’re welcome to try a Debian installation without installing them.

I must admit, that it's mainly a conceptional problem.
Users with very little space available (or even on embedded systems)
won't probably install gvfs[-backends] at all.

But it seems to be a trend that more or less basic packages _depend_ on
more and more stuff which many users don't have at all.


Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the enormous amount of good work
you do with GNOME packaging :) ... but IMHO especially gnome-packages
are an example for this.

IIRC, just with installing g-d-e you already get bluetooth stuff, obex
and webdav (indirectly via gnome-user-share).

Personally I think there should be more freedom, e.g. just recommending
or suggesting such stuff.

Of course it's possible to simply not install g-d-e but having a
metapackage is quite handy.
k... but the kernel is really a special case ;)
They're installed by default (at least if you install recommends by
default) but you're not forced to do so... as it's not depends.


Cheers,
Chris.

Le vendredi 09 avril 2010 à 14:24 +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer a
écrit :

This is the most frequent request about the GNOME metapackages. And I
will answer you to do that:

Yes it is handy, and the reason why it works well is that it has
Depends. If we use Recommends instead, packages won’t be installed upon
upgrades. Furthermore metapackages would be allowed to migrate to
testing without having all packages ready, and this could completely
break some computers, again upon upgrade. Using Depends ensures that for
a large part of our users, the package selection remains conformant to
our recommendations over time, which means more standardization and less
bugs.

Really? How is it different? Isn’t it about hardware support of hundreds
of specific pieces, each of which is only found on a minority of
computers?

I think the same of iStuff as you do, and I wouldn’t buy some. But I
think it’s important that those who bought iCrap can use it out of the
box, as long as there is no impact for others. And I don’t think a few
hundred kilobytes of hard disk space is a substantial impact.

xserver-xorg depends on xserver-xorg-video-*, and it’s the way things
should be. If you want to make your own package selection for X.org, the
X maintainers are not responsible. The same goes for GNOME.

Cheers,

k... you're right here...
Of course,.. but I guess
a) It would be technically extremely difficult to split of everything
hardware related (or vendor related).
b) It's what the kernel intended for,.. managing hardware,... so I'd say
from a semantical view it's ok for him to include so much vendor
dependant stuff.
Really? I guess this is true for Ubuntu (and I do not mean this in any
offensive way).... but not for Debian. At least that's the way I'd like
to see Debian ;)
I guess Debian is more meant for "experts" and you can expect that, if
an expert want's to use e.g. iStuff or Bluetooth with gvfs,.. he's able
to find gvfs-istuff
Well more code (which is not needed) means always more risk of problems
(including security problems).
Of course,... I've admitted that in the beginning


Well... I think you may close the bug then... we probably have different
view here... and more or less I just wanted to mention my concern about
having more and more stuff integrated which the user is (more or less)
forced to use (or at least install)


Best wishes,
Chris.