On Monday 03 March 2008, Tormod Volden wrote: > Thanks for your report. Several hacks have been moved to the > xscreensaver-data-extra (and xscreensaver-gl-extra) package. Just > install that package and the broken kscreensaver will work fine again.
Yes, I understand that, but it is not the point of my report. > > Evidently the package split should have been coordinated with packages > > depending on xscreensaver. > > We don't expect any major problems. All the files are practically the > same, just in two packages. We could choose to drag in both packages > during the upgrade, but chose to do user education instead, to make > the future better. Sorry, personally I know nothing about > kscreensaver-xsavers. I will be pleased to work together with you to > make it work properly. Which is _exactly_ why you should have coordinated with the maintainers of packages depending on your package before making a major change such as this split. > Believe me, the reason for the package split is exactly to make things > easier for third-party screensaver infrastructures (like > gnome-screensaver and kscreensaver), so that they can use xscreensaver > hacks without the user having xscreensaver installed. The split in > -extra is currently the only way to split between safe, recommended > hacks and those who often can cause problems. Fine, but implementing it without discussing the change with those maintainers seems to be causing breakage. > Apparantly, the package split exposes a weakness in the kscreensaver > package. It's not a "weakness" in kscreensaver. It's something that has been a fact for probably a long time. A fact that the split did not take into account and thus is causing breakage. > IMO, only the package shipping a hack should also ship a .desktop for > it, whether in /usr/share/applnk/System/ScreenSavers or > /usr/share/applications/screensavers. Anyway, the .desktop files > should have a TryExec entry to check for the existence of the hack > binary. Maybe you just need to update the relevant .desktop files. I really don't care about any of that. The fact remains that you implemented a change which is causing breakage in another package. That is a release critical bug. > Without knowing kscreensaver much, I think the best solution would be > to stop kscreensaver from shipping .desktop files and rather let it > look for the desktop files installed by other packages. > > On the short term, just let kscreensaver depend on > xscreensaver-data-extra, but remove the dependency later once > kscreensaver is fixed properly. Great. I suggest that you contact the maintainers of kscreensaver ASAP and discuss the details with them. It _is_ your responsibility as maintainer of a package to coordinate with maintainers of packages that have reverse dependencies on your package when making changes that could affect them. Cheers, FJP
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