vanilla-gnome-desktop dependencies too strict

Hi Michael,
  I would be happy for apps to be downgraded to Recommends, if you have a look at the seed[1] alot are already marked recommends (Recommends are the ones marked like "* (gnome-weather)". Overall the selection that are marked Recommends is a little inconsistent and this could certainly be cleaned up a bit.

If you would like to prepare a patch or Merge Proposal, would be happy to sponsor it for you.

As a side note, one thing we has planned to do for a long time, but no one has ever got around to doing it. Is to split the parkageset out into seperate core and apps packages.

[1] https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-gnome-dev/ubuntu-seeds/ubuntu-gnome.bionic/view/head:/desktop
https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-gnome-dev/ubuntu-seeds/ubuntu-gnome.bionic

Hey Tim,

I'd be happy to take a look at it. I haven't done anything with seeds before, but from having a quick look at the wiki it looks like that seed is what generates the vanilla-gnome-desktop package - is that right? If I wanted to try to split up the two packages would I need to produce a second seed?

The bzr branch is the source for generating the meta package (vanilla-gnome-desktop)

The source package ubuntu-gnome-meta, has an 'update' script that reads the seed from bzr and generates the package lists that are used by germinate to produce the final meta packages.

So the basic process is
1. Update bzr branch
2. pull-lp-source ubuntu-gnome-meta
3. For testing update the bzr branch in update.cfg
4. Run the './update' script in ubuntu-gnome-meta
5. Build package as per normal (dpkg-buildpackage or sbuild or PPA etc)

To split the desktop seed,
- You would create a new file in the bzr repo and move all the core deps into it (or probably easier to rename desktop to core, then move the apps into a new desktop file)
- You would need to update the SUPPORTED File in the seed bzr repo, to include the new core seed and have desktop depend on it
- You would need to add a new package for the core seed in debian/control in ubuntu-gnome-meta

Maybe take a look at some of the other flavours, pretty sure lubuntu did a similar split in the past.

Now that certain utilities are being shipped as snaps by default this might be more important. E.g. default install of 18.04 includes gnome-system-monitor as a snap but if you want the vanilla gnome desktop you end up with the deb version as well. If you're using snaps it makes more sense to use the snap version as it can see the snap processes (doesn't look like the deb one can) so would be nicer to be able to remove the deb version rather than the snap if the duplicated menu entries got annoying.

Hello Tim,

The links you posted appear to be dead. Could you please post updated versions? Thank you!

The Ubuntu-gnome seeds can be found here:
https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-gnome-dev/ubuntu-seeds/+git/ubuntu-gnome

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-gnome-meta - 0.87

---------------
ubuntu-gnome-meta (0.87) focal; urgency=medium

  * Refreshed dependencies
  * Make most GNOME apps recommends so they can be removed by users who prefer
    to use Snap/FlatPak versions (LP: #1764596 LP: #1285543 LP: #1408214)
  * Moved baobab to desktop-recommends
  * Moved eog to desktop-recommends
  * Moved evince to desktop-recommends
  * Moved file-roller to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gedit to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-calculator to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-calendar to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-characters to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-contacts to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-disk-utility to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-documents to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-font-viewer to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-initial-setup to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-logs to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-screenshot to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-sushi to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-system-monitor to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-terminal to desktop-recommends
  * Moved gnome-todo to desktop-recommends
  * Moved nautilus to desktop-recommends
  * Moved nautilus-extension-brasero to desktop-recommends
  * Moved simple-scan to desktop-recommends

 -- Tim Lunn <email address hidden> Sat, 11 Apr 2020 11:06:42 +1000