Robie Basak writes:
On Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 07:02:19AM -0500, Amin Bandali wrote:
We received https://bugs.debian.org/1057184 last month about gedit's
'gnome-text-editor' alternative becoming problematic now that there is
an actual gnome-text-editor package/binary.
It sounds like this is being looked at backwards. If the /usr/bin/gnome-text-editor name was already being used by packages using the alternatives system, then a gnome-text-editor package arrived that
stepped on the name, then it's the latter package's bug that it collides without at a minimum declaring a Conflicts against those existing
packages. It probably shouldn't just step on that name without
coordinating with the maintainers of those packages.
It's probably just an oversight, but I think it's important to consider
it from this perspective. A package doesn't just get to take over a slot
in the namespace that is already used for some purpose because an
upstream decided to start using it.
Therefore the bug should probably be reassigned to gnome-text-editor as
it introduced a serious policy violation (section 10.1 "Two different packages must not install programs with different functionality but with
the same filenames").
Thanks for your reply, Robie, and for offering that perspective.
To clarify, both gedit and gnome-text-editor are maintained by the
same people - the Debian GNOME team - and we are in agreement about
the severity of this. It's just that the obscure alternative was
totally forgotten about - I believe it dates back at least 20 years,
way before gnome-text-editor was a project of its own.
We think the best way forward would be to remove the conflicting
alternative from gedit, rather than change gnome-text-editor to ship
its binary with a different name (or to declare it conflicting with
gedit, which would not be a desirable outcome and not conforming with
the policy anyway).
My main hope with this thread was to get feedback about the specific
approach for removing the alternative. I think simply checking that
the alternative exists in postinst configure and removing it would be
enough. I also made its removal in prerm more clearly conditional.
https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gedit/-/merge_requests/11
Having tested a few different scenarios locally, I believe it works
well. So, I've proposed it for review, and plan to upload to unstable
in the coming days if there's no further feedback or objections.
Thanks,
-a
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