[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#861068: flatpak: Flatpak should install at least one of the portals

[Simon McVittie]

On Mon, 24 Apr 2017 at 05:35:27 -0500, Carlos Soriano wrote:
> Flatpak relies on portals to communicate to some services. Currently in Debian
> they are in the recommended packages, but none is installed once Flatpak is
> installed.

As of 0.9.x they're in Recommends, which are installed by default.

The Recommends relationship is for "packages that would be found together
with this one in all but unusual installations", which sounds appropriate
for the portals - using only Flatpak apps that don't need any portals is
certainly an unusual installation, but it's entirely possible.

If you have configured your system to not install Recommends by default
for the sake of minimal footprint, you get to keep both pieces - it is
expected that you'll encounter degraded functionality in that situation.

(It would probably make sense for each desktop metapackage, or at least
the one for GNOME, to pull in the most appropriate portal implementation by
default too. I don't think that happens yet.)

    S