On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:34:19AM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: > Neil McGovern writes ("Bug#681687: missing mime entry"): > > As I understand it, there are still a number of issues with this > > approach (.desktop files do not contain enough information to get > > argument ordering correct in all cases, and it's far too late to start > > using a new auto-generation system this late in the cycle).
> I don't think it likely that the TC will want to overrule the Release > Team's decision on this point. > So I hereby propose the following TC resolution: > 1. The Technical Committee agrees with Neil McGovern's analysis of > the situation regarding evince's missing mime type entry. > 2. If changes are desirable to our system for dealing with mime > type entries and desktop files, including changes to policy or > additional automation, these should be made via the usual > development and policy amendment processes. It is now too > late to do this for wheezy. > 3. We do not disagree with the Release Team's assessment that > the failure of the evince package to provide a mime type > entry is a release critical bug. > 4. We therefore decline to overrule the Release Team. I concur with this. update-mime is a Policy requirement; maintainers don't get to unilaterally decide that bits of Policy are obsolete and ignore them on the basis that the applications they care about are using a different interface. Maintainers have a duty to either follow the Policy, or engage the Debian community to get Policy changed. And I think the GNOME Maintainers haven't done the latter because they know it wouldn't fly - this is a change that breaks compatibility with other software and renders the system as a whole buggier, and changing Policy doesn't paper over that. I'm inclined to think that this should be considered RC for a lot more packages than just evince. I'm not going to go hunting those, but I definitely support the release team's position that it be RC for evince in particular, because evince is the default pdf viewer and pdfs are a very common document type to be passed around between applications that don't yet implement the freedesktop standard. Now, I think providing a tool to auto-translate .desktop files into mailcap entries is a perfectly appropriate way to go about solving this bug, if someone chooses to do that. If such a tool emerges, I think that's great for Debian as a whole, and we can consider revising Policy to consider .desktop files the primary interface instead. But until we have such a tool working in the release, it's the responsibility of the evince maintainers to make sure their package complies with policy. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature