Your message dated Thu, 03 Sep 2015 20:34:14 -0700 with message-id <20150904033414.gd3...@qor.donarmstring.com> and subject line [CTTE #741573] Debian Menu System has caused the Debian Bug report #741573, regarding On menu systems. to be marked as done.
This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with. If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith. (NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact ow...@bugs.debian.org immediately.) -- 741573: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741573 Debian Bug Tracking System Contact ow...@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message ---Package: tech-ctte Severity: normal Dear technical comittee, I am asking for your arbitration on an unresolvable conflict on the subject of Desktop menu systems, between a broad number of developers including on one hand maintainers of the Debian packages for the GNOME and KDE desktop systems and the mime-support package (myself), and on the other hand Bill Alombert on his quality of Policy Editor (DPL delegate). Over almost one year of work and discussion, including a call for comments on the debian-devel mailing list, we have shaped a modification to the Debian Policy that 1) incorporates the description of the FreeDesktop menu system and its use in Debian for listing program in desktop menus and associating them with media types, and 2) softens the wording on the Debian Menu system to reflect that in Jessie it will be neither displayed nor installed by default on standard Debian installations. The proposal reached consensus through the Policy Changes process, was seconded by me, Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer, Cyril Brulebois and Russ Allbery, who is also Policy Editor and assessed that the consensus was obtained. Apparently without coordination with the other Policy Editors, Bill then canceled the change and has been avoiding any concrete discussion the change. You can find the proposal at the following URL. http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=dbnpolicy/policy.git;a=commitdiff;h=ba679bff76f5b9152f43d5bc901b9b3aad257479;hp=f6997b3ba793c9a9e463cca9f7e7b138add8b788 The whole discussion is at https://bugs.debian.org/707851. I will not describe Bill's behaviour in further details unless you ask me to do so, but the end result is that me and others are stongly dissatisfied by his obstructive attitude and unilateral veto, to the point that we do not think that discussion is possible and we need a decision from a third party. I am asking you to overrule Bill and let me or the Policy Editors upload an updated version of the Policy containing our changes. I will inform Bill and the debian-policy mailing list in the thread for #707851 once I have a bug number for this appeal. Please let me know if there is further information you need. Cheers, and many thanks for your work. -- Charles Plessy Maintainer of the 'mime-support' package Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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--- Begin Message ---The technical committee was asked in #741573 to decide an issue of Debian technical policy regarding menu regarding the menu system. ==== RESOLUTION ==== Whereas: 1. The Debian Policy Manual states (§9.6) that 'The Debian menu package provides a standard interface between packages providing applications and "menu programs"'. It further states that 'All packages that provide applications that need not be passed any special command line arguments for normal operations should register a menu entry for those applications'. 2. All details about menu system requirement are delegated to the Debian Menu sub-policy and Debian Menu System manuals (the "Debian menu system"). 3. An external specification, the Freedesktop Desktop Entry Specification (the ".desktop spec"), with native support in many X desktop environments, has appeared since the Debian Menu system was developed. The .desktop spec offers a fairly strict super-set of Debian Menu system functionality. 4. The .desktop specification has significant technical benefits for users over the Debian menu system. The .desktop specification works together with the freedesktop.org mime type and icon specifications to provide operations expected by desktop users from other environments, such as Mac OS X or Windows. As such, applications must provide a .desktop file to operate well in most desktop environments. 5. The Debian Technical Committee has been asked to resolve a dispute between maintainers of Debian Policy over a change that i. incorporates the description of the FreeDesktop menu system and its use in Debian for listing program in desktop menus and associating them with media types ii. softens the wording on the Debian Menu system to reflect that in Jessie it will be neither displayed nor installed by default on standard Debian installations. Therefore: The Technical Committee has reviewed the underlying technical issues around this question and has resolved that Debian will be best served by migrating away from our own Debian Menu System and towards the common Freedesktop Desktop Entry Specification, and that menu information for applications should not be duplicated in two different formats. To encourage this change, we make menu files optional, ask that packages include .desktop files as appropriate and prohibit packages from providing both menu and .desktop files for the same application. Using its power under §6.1.1 to decide on any matter of technical policy, and its power under §6.1.5 to offer advice: 1. The Technical Committee adopts the changes proposed by Charles Plessy in ba679bff[1]. 2. In addition to those changes, the Technical Committee resolves that packages providing a .desktop file shall not also provide a menu file for the same application. 3. We further resolve that "menu programs" should not depend on the Debian Menu System and should instead rely on .desktop file contents for constructing a list of applications to present to the user. 4. We advise the maintainers of the 'menu' package to update that package to reflect this increased focus on .desktop files by modifying the 'menu' package to use .desktop files for the source of menu information in addition to menu files. 5. Discussion of the precise relationship between menu file section/hints values and .desktop file Categories values may be defined within the Debian Menu sub-policy and Debian Menu System. 6. Further modifications to the menu policy are allowed using the normal policy modification process. [1]: https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/dbnpolicy/policy.git/commit/?id=ba679bff76f5b9152f43d5bc901b9b3aad257479 ==== END OF RESOLUTION ==== The technical committee would like to thank everyone who participated in the discussion of #741573 and the patience of the Policy Editors as the technical committee worked through this issue very slowly. Please see http://bugs.debian.org/741573 for discussion of this bug.
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