--- /dev/null
+Resent-From: Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
+Resent-To: debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org
+Resent-CC: Technical Committee <debian-ctte@lists.debian.org>
+Resent-Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:57:01 +0000
+Resent-Message-ID: <handler.681834.B681834.134444127923471@bugs.debian.org>
+Resent-Sender: debian-ctte-request@lists.debian.org
+From: Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
+To: 681834@bugs.debian.org
+Subject: Bug#681834: network-manager, gnome, Recommends vs Depends
+Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2012 16:54:36 +0100
+
+How about this:
+
+ Whereas:
+
+ 1. Our technical objectives are:
+
+ (i) Users who do not do anything special should get
+ network-manager along with gnome (in this case, along with
+ gnome-core). These users should continue to have
+ network-manager installed, across upgrades.
+
+ (ii) Users should be able to conveniently install and upgrade
+ gnome without network-manager.
+
+ (iii) Users who deliberately removed network-manager in squeeze
+ (which they will generally have done by deliberately violating
+ the Recommends from the gnome metapackage) should not have to
+ do anything special to avoid it coming back in wheezy.
+
+ (iv) Users who do make a decision that they do not want to use
+ network-manager should not have to read specific
+ documentation, or temporarily have network-manager installed,
+ risk being exposed to bugs in network-manager's configuration
+ arrangements, and so on.
+
+ 2. Our technical objectives do NOT include:
+
+ (i) The `gnome-core' metapackage should in some sense perfectly or
+ exactly correspond to GNOME upstream's definition of `the GNOME
+ Core', specifically including every such component as a hard
+ Depends.
+
+ (ii) The contents of any metapackage should be the correct
+ expression of the subjective opinion of the metapackage's
+ maintainer.
+
+ (iii) Users who choose to globally disable Recommends should still
+ get the desired behaviours as described above in point 1.
+
+ 3. The solution recommended by the gnome-core maintainers is
+ that users who do not wish to use network-manager should have it
+ installed but disable it.
+
+ Installing network-manager in these circumstances does
+ not fully meet any of the above objectives apart from 1(i).
+
+ 5. The alternative solution rejected by the gnome-core maintainers
+ is downgrade the dependency to Recommends.
+
+ This solution meets all of the objectives from point 1, except
+ that infelicities in teh package manager may mean that the user
+ in 1(iii) may need to take action to prevent network-manager
+ being reinstalled during an upgrade.
+
+ Therefore:
+
+ 6. The Technical Committee overrules the decision of the gnome-core
+ metapackage maintainer. The dependency from gnome-core to
+ network-manager-gnome should be downgraded to Recommends.
+
+ 7. The Technical Committee requests that the Release Managers
+ unblock the update to implement this decision, so that this
+ change may be released in wheezy.
+
+Ian.
+
+
+--
+To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-REQUEST@lists.debian.org
+with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
+Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20514.35772.350203.926582@chiark.greenend.org.uk
+
--- /dev/null
+Resent-From: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
+Resent-To: debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org
+Resent-CC: Technical Committee <debian-ctte@lists.debian.org>
+Resent-Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2012 22:39:04 +0000
+Resent-Message-ID: <handler.681834.B681834.13444653728127@bugs.debian.org>
+Resent-Sender: debian-ctte-request@lists.debian.org
+From: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
+To: 681834@bugs.debian.org
+Subject: Bug#681834: network-manager, gnome, Recommends vs Depends
+Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:36:04 -0700
+
+Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
+
+> How about this:
+
+This doesn't feel quite right to me, but I'm not sure how to phrase my
+feeling in terms of specific objections. Let me try to instead draft the
+sort of statement that I feel like I want to make and see what people
+think of it.
+
+ The gnome-core metapackage is intended to reflect the core of the
+ GNOME desktop environment: the basic tools and subsystems that
+ together constitute GNOME. The gnome metapackage is intended to
+ reflect the broader desktop environment, including extra components
+ and applications.
+
+ network-manager is the GNOME network control system, and is
+ recommended for most GNOME users. Some Debian GNOME users don't like
+ some of network-manager's behavior and prefer to instead use other
+ tools, either basic ifupdown or other frameworks such as wicd.
+
+ In squeeze, the gnome metapackage lists network-manager in Recommends
+ but not Depends. In wheezy, currently, network-manager has moved from
+ gnome to gnome-core, and from Recommends to Depends. This represents
+ a substantially increased insistance that users of the GNOME
+ metapackages have network-manager installed. This change is, so far
+ as the Technical Committee understands, driven primarily by user
+ confusion and bug reports, but does not reflect a deeper or tighter
+ integration of network-manager into GNOME than was the case in
+ squeeze.
+
+ If matters are left as they currently stand, users who have the gnome
+ metapackages installed but do not have network-manager installed will,
+ in the process of upgrading from squeeze to wheezy (either due to an
+ explicit decision to remove it or an implicit decision to not install
+ it by disabling automatic installation of Recommends), end up
+ installing network-manager on systems where it is currently not
+ installed. It will also no longer be possible for users to install
+ GNOME metapackages in wheezy without installing network-manager.
+
+ For most applications and components, the only drawback of this would
+ be some additional disk space usage, since the application, despite
+ being installed, wouldn't need to be used. However, network-manager
+ assumes that, if it is installed, it should attempt to manage the
+ system's network configuration. It attempts to avoid overriding local
+ manual configuration, but it isn't able to detect all cases where the
+ user is using some other component or system to manage networking.
+ The user has to take separate, explicit (and somewhat unusual for the
+ average user) action to disable network-manager after it has been
+ installed.
+
+ The Technical Committee believes that this will cause undesireable
+ behavior for upgrades from squeeze, and (of somewhat lesser
+ importance) will make it more difficult than necessary for GNOME users
+ to swap network management components, something for which there
+ appears to be noticable demand. We therefore believe that
+ network-manager should be either moved to Recommends in gnome-core, or
+ moved from the gnome-core metapackage to the gnome metapackage (which
+ is defined as including additional, optional components).
+
+ Please note that this is not a general statement about GNOME
+ components. It is very specific to network-manager because all of the
+ following apply:
+
+ 1. The package takes action automatically because it is installed,
+ rather than being a component that can either be run or not at the
+ user's choice.
+
+ 2. The package has historically been recommended rather than listed as
+ a dependency, so existing Debian users are used to that behavior.
+
+ 3. There is both demonstrable, intentional widespread replacement of
+ that package by Debian GNOME users and no significant loss of
+ unrelated GNOME desktop functionality by replacing it with a
+ different component.
+
+ If any of these points did not apply, the situation would be
+ significantly different.
+
+--
+Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
+
+
+--
+To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-REQUEST@lists.debian.org
+with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
+Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87k3x9royz.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu
+
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