Default Plasma install cleanups and improvements

Pino Toscano pino at debian.org
Tue Feb 28 20:53:45 GMT 2023


In data sabato 25 febbraio 2023 23:18:11 CET, Aurélien COUDERC ha scritto:
> - plasma-workspace-wayland installed by default so the wayland session is available (the default session stays X11)

That I don't agree how it was done (more on that later, after some
explanations).

The idea is that kde-plasma-desktop is the package for the users
representing "a working Plasma desktop". This is done for a number of
reasons:
1) it is easier to have a meta package different than the binaries
   provided by the actual sources, so in case they change the
   "entry point" is still the same
2) some of the sources have kind-of mutual dependencies: in particular
   plasma-desktop and plasma-workspace
3) adding user-level relationships (dependencies, recommends, etc) in
   "low-level" packages such as plasma-desktop makes it harder to spot

Team memebers in the past avoided touching the metapackages of meta-kde,
getting in troubles especially with (2) (and partially with (3)).
I'd really really really recommend not getting in the same troubles
again, and rather keep using the metapackages as "the interface" for
users.

The metapackages definitely need some help/refreshing, so any suggestion
is welcome; I had some notes for them, so let me add them to what you
suggest. Also, because of what I said earlier, I'd really recommend
leaving only functional dependencies in big packages such as
plasma-workspace and plasma-desktop.

> tasksel [1] :
>     Drop apper, hardly maintained upstream, superseded by Plasma Discover.
>     Drop dragonplayer, already pulled transitively by kde-standard.
>     Drop k3b/k3b-i18n, not necessary on default installs anymore these days.

OK.

>     Drop plasma-nm, already pulled transitively by plasma-desktop.

NACK: plasma-desktop does not need plasma-nm to work, and it is more
like a "recommended desktop application" -> right for kde-standard or
kde-plasma-desktop.

> meta-kde [2] :
>     Drop kde-standard dependencies already pulled transitively:
>         polkit-kde-agent, plasma-nm pulled by plasma-desktop

NACK, same reasons as above.

>         plasma-dataengines-addons already pulled by plasma-widgets-addons

OK

>     Drop kde-plasma-desktop dependencies already pulled transitively:
>         plasma-workspace pulled by plasma-desktop

NACK

>     Add packages to kde-plasma-desktop Recommends as per upstream packaging recommendations:
>         bump kdeconnect from Suggests to Recommends
>         iio-sensor-proxy: allows automatic screen rotation on Wayland
>         maliit-keyboard: provides on-screen keyboard on Wayland
>         power-profiles-daemon: enables the power profile functionality in Plasma

OK, although I don't have experience with the last 3. Considering where
we are in terms of freeze, I'd be skeptical in pulling them now, not
enough time to test them properly and make sure they integrate
correctly.

Back to plasma-workspace-wayland: IMHO it feels a bit late to add as
bit to pull in by default, especially when it wasn't much tested as
default configuration. Also, IMHO this is something to add to
kde-plasma-desktop, making it as alternative to plasma-workspace
(primary or secondary, depending on whether we want Wayland by default,
maybe for trixie).

I have the following suggestions:

- plasma-desktop:
  - polkit-kde-agent-1 - drop from deps (pulled by kde-plasma-desktop)
  - accountsservice, kactivitymanagerd - drop from deps, move them to
    kde-plasma-desktop recommends
  - almost all the recommends - drop from recommends, move them to
    kde-plasma-desktop
  - the "kwin-x11 | kwin" recommends needs to be applied to
    kde-plasma-desktpp, which only has a kwin-x11 recommends

- plasma-workspace:
  - gdb-minimal | gdb - drop from deps! you should be able to run
    plasma without a debugger...
  - drkonqi, kactivitymanagerd, milou - drop from deps, move them to
    kde-plasma-desktop recommends
  - udisks2 - drop from deps, already pulled by kde-plasma-desktop
  - kwin-common - drop from deps, kwin will pull it 
  - libkf5plasma5 - drop from deps, manual shared libraries dependency
  - all the recommends - drop from recommends, move them to
    kde-plasma-desktop

- drkonqi
  - add the "gdb-minimal | gdb" recommend, either alone or OR'ed with
    systemd-coredump

- kde-plasma-desktop
  - move plasma-workspace-wallpapers from kde-full dependency to
    kde-plasma-desktop recommends

There is possibly more to review/shuffle, however this is not the right
time to do this job, so I'll stop here for now.

-- 
Pino Toscano
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/pkg-kde-talk/attachments/20230228/18faede4/attachment.sig>


More information about the pkg-kde-talk mailing list