Bug#850522: gnome-software: demote appstream to Recommends

[Ritesh Raj Sarraf]

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On Sat, 2017-01-07 at 18:34 +0100, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
> We already have open bugs on appstream requesting delta downloads
> (patches welcome).
> And you can modify what gets downloaded:
> ```
> Icon downloads can be disabled per-source in sources.list by changing
> the sources line to something like:
> deb [] uri suite
> components (not tested)
> Or drop in an apt.conf snippet disabling it, that way you don't need
> to touch the one shipped by AppStream.
> ```
> 

Oh great. Thanks. That'll do a workaround for now. 

I was hoping to ask you if an `apptstream update` model would work. But reading
your comments on the other bug, you opine otherwise.

- ------------
The data is part of the archive metadata, and it needs to match the
"regular" packages files - data being out of sync will lead to bad
user experience (e.g. we would have data for packages already removed
from the archive, or outdated data, or simply wrong data).
- ------------

But this would be the same justification for apt-file too. In my opinion, a fair
balance would be to have the current appstream behavior (that of downloading all
metadata) be the default. And just provide users an option to explicitly update
appstream data through an `appstream update` kind model.

I do the same with apt-file. From time to time, I update its data manually.
Such users like me, can configure it such (than disable it) and update its
metadata manually.


> In any case, doing so will break GNOME Software.

Yes. I just checked that. Without appstream, gnome-software is not usable.

- -- 
Ritesh Raj Sarraf | http://people.debian.org/~rrs
Debian - The Universal Operating System
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