From 91cf4e3e4efe7de341343ac5aa7b98174f89b5b5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Russ Allbery Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2012 14:08:25 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Draft two of the network-manager text --- .../rra-draft-v2 | 71 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 71 insertions(+) create mode 100644 681834_gnome_recommends_networkmanager/rra-draft-v2 diff --git a/681834_gnome_recommends_networkmanager/rra-draft-v2 b/681834_gnome_recommends_networkmanager/rra-draft-v2 new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c757a54 --- /dev/null +++ b/681834_gnome_recommends_networkmanager/rra-draft-v2 @@ -0,0 +1,71 @@ + Whereas: + + 1. 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. + + 2. 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. + + 3. 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; specifically, there is no + longer any way to install any but the most minimal GNOME metapackage + (gnome-session) without installing network-manager, and users who have + gnome or gnome-core installed but have removed or never installed + network-manager will have network-manager installed during an upgrade + from squeeze. + + 4. 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. + + 5. 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 moved to Recommends in gnome-core. + + 6. 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: + + (i) 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. + + (ii) The package has historically been recommended rather than listed + as a dependency, so existing Debian users are used to that + behavior and will expect it to be preserved during upgrades. + + (ii) 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. + + Therefore: + + 7. The Technical Committee overrules the decision of the gnome-core + metapackage maintainers. The dependency from gnome-core to + network-manager-gnome should be downgraded to Recommends. + + 8. The Technical Committee requests that the Release Managers unblock + the update to implement this decision, so that this change may be + released in wheezy. -- 2.39.5