gnome-desktop-item-edit should be in a new package

[Matthieu Baerts]

Hello,

I think gnome-panel and exo-utils should not be recommended by Alacarte package.
Indeed, Alacarte is a menu editor for the GNOME desktop but the Gnome-Panel and the Xfce-Panel are not the only one with a Gnome-Menu (e.g. made with libgnome-menu).
Cairo-Dock (but I'm sure there is also other applications) also uses libgnome-menu in order to have a "Gnome-Menu-like" and we can use Cairo-Dock without Gnome/XFCE Panel.

But Alacarte needs gnome-desktop-item-edit or exo-desktop-item-edit (only on XFCE sessions) to edit .desktop.
Is it maybe possible to move 'gnome-desktop-item-edit' in a new package?
I think it's the best solution if we want to edit menus with Alacarte on a Cairo-Dock session without installing all dependences of gnome-panel.

Thank you

[Lionel Le Folgoc (mrpouit)]

Without gnome-panel/exo-utils, alacarte is rather limited (e.g. you can't create/edit desktop files...).

[Matthieu Baerts (matttbe)]

Yes but Alacarte can be used to edit the gnome-menu-like available on a Cairo-Dock session (gnome-panel and exo-utils are useless) :)

[Matthieu Baerts (matttbe)]

It seems Alacarte needs gnome-desktop-item-edit or exo-item-edit (only on XFCE sessions) to edit .desktop...

[Matthieu Baerts (matttbe)]

But is it maybe possible to move 'gnome-desktop-item-edit' in a new package? (it seems this request was proposed a long time ago: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=319417 )
I think it's a good solution if we want to edit menus with Alacarte on a Cairo-Dock session without installing all dependences of gnome-panel.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. Thanks in advance!

[Matthieu Baerts (matttbe)]

@Jeremy: is it really an upstream bug?
Here is the solution that I'm proposing:
 * Create a new package in order to separate gnome-desktop-item-edit and gnome-panel: lp:~matttbe/ubuntu/precise/gnome-panel/975299
 * Replace gnome-panel by gnome-desktop-item-edit for Alacarte recommended packages: lp:~matttbe/ubuntu/precise/alacarte/975299

The new versions of these packages are building on my ppa (ppa:matttbe/ppa) (I tested just before with pbuilder) and I think it fixes this bug.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Since this isn't a Ubuntu-specific feature request, I'd like to see this proposed to the GNOME developers. Perhaps gnome-desktop-item-edit could be a part of the gnome-desktop package. Then it wouldn't need to be a separate package.

[Matthieu Baerts (matttbe)]

Yes I understand that gnome-desktop-item-edit should be part of another GNOME package but here is an Ubuntu specific solution to fix this bug by simply separating gnome-desktop-item-edit and gnome-panel (just like libpanel-applet-4-0 and gnome-panel-data which are available on separated packages).

I can report this bug to Debian devs too if you want but they are still using the version '3.2.1'.

[Matthieu Baerts (matttbe)]

@Jeremy: but is it not possible to fix this bug by merging these two branches into Ubuntu branches? lp:~matttbe/ubuntu/precise/gnome-panel/975299 and lp:~matttbe/ubuntu/precise/alacarte/975299

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Yes, your patch probably would work, but...

I don't want to make this change until either the GNOME developers (preferred) or at least the Debian GNOME maintainers make the change. There are a couple different ways of handling this (like moving the functionality to the gnome-desktop source package) and I don't want to have to deal with cleaning up afterwards if either Debian or GNOME decides to handle this wishlist request differently.

[Matthieu Baerts (matttbe)]

Yes ok, I understand.
But is it possible to fix this bug before Precise's release? :)

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Well Matthieu, we're almost out of time since gnome-panel is part of the Edubuntu CD. I'd have to say it's probably not going to happen for Precise.

It sounds like your bug is that you want to use Cairo Dock and alacarte without installing gnome-panel but that doesn't seem an important enough bug fix to me to rush in at the last moment.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Unsubscribing ubuntu-sponsors, we're past the time that we can do this pre-release as alacarte is on the Xubuntu and Edubuntu images. This change needs to be coordinated with Debian. If could ask for SRU team approval once this gets sorted out in 12.10.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Resetting back to Triaged since nothing can be done ATM.

[Matthieu Baerts (matttbe)]

Alacarte has now its own menu/item editor => http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/alacarte/3.7/alacarte-3.7.90.news