Comment 3 for bug 845549

Thanks for your work on this!

> Ok, the fix is:
> - The lightdm-gtk-greeter package no longer provides any configuration.

Looks ok until this sentence, and then when I read what's below, I'm starting not to understand why such a complex solution is used...

> - This package recommends the virtual package lightdm-gtk-greeter-config.
> - There is a new package lightdm-gtk-greeter-config-ubuntu which provides a
> configuration file suitable for Ubuntu.
>

No, please don't do that, several packages to share one conffile don't look like the right solution to me (not to mention that having to go through NEW now is a waste of archive admin's time).

> So derivatives should make a package that:
> - Provide, conflict and replace lightdm-gtk-greeter-config

This is definitely a bad idea: it is already hard enough to be able to co-install two derivatives because of unexpected conflicts that arise (a few releases back, it was due to libsdl-{alsa,pulse}, then notification-daemon, and now that?); with such a solution it will be completely impossible.

> - Contain the file /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf
>
> Suggested naming scheme, lightdm-gtk-greeter-config-xubuntu, lightdm-
> gtk-greeter-config-lubuntu etc.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but you could use alternatives instead of this complicated solution. This is what was done in the old times of gdm (before its rewrite), and seemed to work fine (sorry if I look like an u-a fanboy, but as this worked in the past with gdm, I feel we're reinventing the wheel, but with a squared shape this time).

1/ All packages stop shipping /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf.

2/ lightdm-gtk-greeter (or lightdm-gtk-greeter-config-ubuntu if you insist on splitting it) ships /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter-ubuntu.conf , registered as /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf by u-a with the lowest priority in the maintainer scripts: "update-alternatives --install /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf lightdm-gtk-greeter-config-derivative /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter-ubuntu.conf 10"

3/ xubuntu-default-settings ships /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf, registered as /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf by u-a with an higher priority in the maintainer scripts: "update-alternatives --install /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf lightdm-gtk-greeter-config-derivative /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf 30"

4/ lubuntu-default-settings ships /etc/xdg/xdg-lubuntu/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf, registered as /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf by u-a with an higher priority in the maintainer scripts: "update-alternatives --install /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf lightdm-gtk-greeter-config-derivative /etc/xdg/xdg-lubuntu/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf 50"

5/ etc.

It's easy to change by an admin using "u-a --config lightdm-gtk-greeter-config-derivative", is not a conffile upgrade nightmare to handle, and doesn't involve any conflict for the package manager.

Additionally, all packages doing that can provide lightdm-gtk-greeter-config (no replace nor conflict) to be easily found.

What do you think?