Ubuntu
ubuntu-meta package

  1. Bug #1726093
  2. Comment #0

Comment 0 for bug 1726093

Revision history for this message
Jeremy Bícha (jbicha) wrote :

Impact
======
Ubuntu doesn't install particular files ( gir1.2-gmenu-3.0 ) that are needed by several popular GNOME Shell extensions.

Test Case
=========
Install the update to Ubuntu 17.10.
Open the Ubuntu Software app.
Search for Arc Menu
Install it.
There should be an A menu in the top left of the screen.

Other Info
==========
Debian-based distros are somewhat unique in that they split gir files into separate packages. This is normally not a problem since .deb packages should simply depend on the packages they need. It is a bit of a problem for GNOME Shell extensions distributed through extensions.gnome.org since they can't depend on system packages except as a comment in the extension description that may or may be read even if it is mentioned.

Specifically, there are several extensions that add a traditional applications menu to GNOME Shell. These usually need gir1.2-gmenu-3.0.

This wasn't noticed much before because both Debian GNOME and Ubuntu GNOME installed the gnome-shell-extensions package by default which depends on gir1.2-gmenu-3.0.

Now though, it just feels to users like Ubuntu is broken. I've read comments that think that Ubuntu is intentionally trying to make it difficult to use these app menu extensions.