Hello Ben Westover, Thanks for your bug report. Followup comments below.
On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 12:40:43AM +0000, Ben Westover wrote: > Package: gnome-remote-desktop > X-Debbugs-Cc: m...@benthetechguy.net > Version: 43.2-1 > Severity: important > > Dear Maintainer, > > When I run grdctl, none of the VNC-related options are available. I see > that the Debian packaging has chosen not to build it. Why is this? I've looked at debian/rules[1] and the debian packaging git repo[2] which made me start doubting that "Debian" has choosen to not build VNC support. I looked at the build log[3] and indeed noticed that VNC support was disabled at configure/build time. I then looked up what the default setting[4] for VNC was and saw that it was false (disabled) by default. All of the above information can be found linked from the package tracker page[5]. I then went to look at the upstream git history[6] and the commit which disables the option, which has the following explanation on why: ``` RDP offers better performance, better privacy, and better client app availability. Also, gnome-control-center 42 only advertises RDP, not VNC Therefore, we recommend distros & users use RDP and don't recommend VNC. ``` We could ofcourse override upstreams default settings, but given the above recommendation from upstream there would need to be a really good motivation to why we should do that! > I need to use VNC for my job, and gnome-remote-desktop is the only > solution I know of that supports Wayland well. Why do you need VNC (instead of RDP)? > > At the very least, if adding VNC back to the package isn't an option, > can it at least be removed from the package description? > > > This daemon enables GNOME to offer remote desktop sharing using VNC > > with PipeWire. > > It's a bit misleading to say your package supports VNC when it doesn't. The package description was likely put together when this was initially packaged. As Debian is a volunteer effort, please consider submitting a merge-request on salsa.debian.org with a new updated description (which you can probably help scrape together based on an updated description that might be found on the upstream webpage for gnome-remote-desktop). Regards, Andreas Henriksson [1]: https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/g/gnome-remote-desktop/rules-43.2-1 [2]: https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-remote-desktop/-/commits/debian/master/debian [3]: https://buildd.debian.org/status/fetch.php?pkg=gnome-remote-desktop&arch=amd64&ver=43.2-1&stamp=1670360554&raw=0 [4]: https://sources.debian.org/src/gnome-remote-desktop/43.2-1/meson_options.txt/#L18 [5]: https://tracker.debian.org/gnome-remote-desktop [6]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop/-/commit/55ce55afa1ddb502d4c8e13ae813f348d5f76402