Comment 2 for bug 395575

Hello,

The issue of how best to provide support for the freedesktop.org display
managers (kdm and gdm at the moment) has been discussed on debian-devel [1]
and in bug report #330064 [2]. Nothing approaching consensus was reached. I
outlined a number of issues that would have to be resolved before a system
of .desktop file auto-generation, as envisioned by Bernhard R. Link, would
be satisfactory, and no one volunteered to implement such a system.
Furthermore, it is my personal opinion (obviously not shared by everyone)
that such a system would provide little benefit. Anyone who did wish to
undertake such a task would be well advised to ask for help from the
menu-xdg and menu maintainers, Chris Cheney and Bill Allombert,
respectively.

This leaves maintainers with three choices:
1) Wait for someone to step forward and implement such a system, and solve
the problems it would raise.
2) Step forward themselves to implement such a system.
3) Add support to their own package, by creating a .desktop file and
shipping it in /usr/share/xsessions, as my original bug report suggested,
if they feel that their users would benefit. Obviously, this is my personal
recommendation.

I hope that this clarifies the situation, and will allow maintainers to make
informed judgments on how to proceed.

Cheers,
Christopher Martin

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/09/msg01188.html and
thereafter
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=330064