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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