[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#896818: Bug#896818: libnma over GI not working

[Eli Schwartz]

On 06/26/2018 10:10 PM, Eli Schwartz wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Apr 2018 23:07:25 +0200 Michael Biebl <biebl at debian.org> wrote:
>> Thanks for the bug report.
>> Seems we don't have any package in stretch yet, which uses
>> gir1.2-nma-1.0, which is probably why this issue has went unnoticed.
>>
>> But that also means, it's probably not that important to fix this via a
>> stable upload. Or put this differently: Why do you want to have this
>> fixed in stretch, is there any software you use in stretch that requires
>> gir1.2-nma-1.0?
> One possibly good reason to get this fixed is because, Cinnamon will not
> merge this PR until you do: https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/pull/7486
> 
> And this PR makes Cinnamon work better and support new features, like
> https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/pull/7118
> 
> Since the current state of things is that the bindings are badly broken,
> and this does nothing other than to make things work the way they were
> always meant to, I think it is reasonable to backport this pretty minor fix.
> 
> 
> End result: peoples' custom scripts no longer crash and burn.
> 
> Also, downstream developers of software that is in fact in stretch, do
> not need to burden themselves by refusing to improve their software on
> the grounds that it will crash and burn on stretch. This affects both
> people who build their own packages for testing, and people who develop
> a respin of stretch, which is supposed to showcase their software.
> 
> Like Linux Mint Debian Edition, which is based on stretch, but includes
> the latest Cinnamon packages.
> 
> Also, if downstream developers are afraid to use non-deprecated
> libraries like libnma because it will break on Debian, it means other
> distros which use more recent networkmanager versions cannot benefit
> from fixes and improvements, which in its own small way drags down the
> entire Linux ecosystem. As an Arch Linux user (and maintainer of the
> Cinnamon desktop on Arch) I'd like to see Cinnamon be improved...
> 
> It's such a simple fix...
> 
> Please note also that the commit has been backported to
> network-manager-applet's *maintenance* 1.4 branch, and is available in
> 1.4.8 (released 3 weeks ago on 01 Jun 2018).
> 
> Upstream-sanctioned maintenance releases which fix bugs resulting in
> completely broken package components, are good candidates for inclusion. :)

You yourself requested that the cinnamon maintainers apply downstream
patches to cinnamon in order to stop using libnm-glib, cf.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=857231

I'm really trying not to feel like this vindicates my extreme pessimism
about Debian as a distribution, but when you pull stunts like this it's
difficult.

On the one hand you keep filing bugs against any packages which dare to
code against libnm-glib/libnm-gtk.

On the other hand, you refuse to fix the things you want developers to
migrate *to*, on the grounds that they're not yet using it!

If you would just *fix a completely broken component of networkmanager*,
then progress in that upstream PR would move forward, and hopefully be
merged into the next cinnamon release. You could then drop those patches
from the cinnamon package.

This would help move Debian away from being a janky distribution that
obsessively patches everything to death. :(

-- 
Eli Schwartz
Bug Wrangler and Trusted User