I was asked to look at a thread here but haven't reached it, instead I'm entering the second huge thread that seems to need my comments.
First of all, there are only three reasons for removing packages:
a) F*cked up license that forbids distribution
b) The package causes damages on systems
c) The maintainer requests its removal
Neither Gnome nor Gtk pass any of a) through c). Thus there is no
reason for removing Gnome. Apart from that I would consider its
removal brain damaged.
The Gtk packages in our distribution produce an ugly looking overhead
of packages. I have to admit this. I already spoke to BenC on IRC
about this issue. Our unstable distribution is for development. Thus
it is ok to contain a bunch of packages that are only used for
development.
However if we are to release potato (about one month before the first
freeze) we *should* go through all packages and find out which
versions of Gtk are needed.
If packages depend on older versions of Gtk and work properly with
newer ones either the maintainer or a QA group should recompile them
in order to remove dependencies to old Gtk packages. Recompiling each
Gtk-dependend package every time a new Gtk comes out doesn't make
sense, but doing it at the end does make sense - imho.
I'm sure we will be able to remove some of them and keep only the last
few versions in the archive.
Now for Gnome. Gnome is a big win for the community. Not only
because it's a counterpart to KDE but also because it's a different
design and different people. (From my experience they're much cooler
btw.)
Having Debian GNU trying to integrate Gnome in their system is a big
win for all Debian users and for Gnome as well. We already went
through this with KDE who changed some of their code organising
because Debian places files according to FSSTND.
Even though Gnome is under heavy development it is usable. This is
enough reason to ship it and we will continue this. There are bugs,
for sure, like in any other package. The more people using it and
detecting these bugs the better Gnome will be.
Regards,
Joey
--
GNU does not eliminate all the world's problems, only some of them.
-- The GNU Manifesto
Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.
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