[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] policy on desktop files?

[Ryan Sims]

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 9:27 AM, Grigorios Bouzakis <grbzks at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 08, 2008 at 03:53:29PM +0300, Dimitrios Apostolou wrote:
>> On Thursday 08 May 2008 15:58:51 bardo wrote:
>> > On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Grigorios Bouzakis <grbzks at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > Hi, i wanted to note that there is
>> > > http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Desktop_Project maintained by bardo
>> > > a TU, which mentions absolutely nothing about upstream.
>> > > Instead it says "I (bardo) will write/modify the necessary files and
>> > > notify the corresponding maintainers so they can be added to the
>> > > packages." Additionally there are links to the bug tracker.
>> > > I have no idea if bardo submitts them upstream as well but i doubt it.
>> >
>> > At the moment I don't. When I announced the project it got a good
>> > reaction, so I carried on with it, but after a while creating and
>> > providing desktop files through the bug tracker I started receiving
>> > the "upstream problem" answer. This has become pretty frequent, so
>> > lately I haven't been doing very much on the Arch side. The few
>> > developers I tried to contact didn't do anything, so I suppose there's
>> > little to no interest from them.
>> >
>> > The whole thing has started to become more frustrating than anything,
>> > so at the moment I'm not working on it anymore.
>>
>> IMHO, even though I'm aggresively against patching, I don't consider
>> the .desktop files as patches. They are some extra, *non-code* files, that is
>> fair for the distro to provide (like other configuration files). I don't
>> really blame the app developers that don't include them upstream.
>
> True, they are not patches, but they should be part of the applicqations
> source. Requering from packagers to write & include a .desktop file in
> their ditros for actively developed projects is IMO unecceptable today
> with linux being part of the desktop market. If they dont provide one its
> quite clear they dont want having one.
> If i submit a ,desktop file upstream and it gets rejected it should be
> treated the same as a rejected patch.
> Exception to the above rule would be projects not being actively developed
> anymore and only them.
>
> Greg
>
>

We needn't get bogged down in another "is this the ARCH WAY?!?!"
conversation here; I don't think it needs to be a policy decision.  If
neither Arch nor upstream want to deal with .desktop files (and they
both seem to have their reasons), would it be possible to host some
space somewhere that users could post their own?  It wouldn't need to
be Arch-hosted, perhaps this is a sf project waiting to happen; sort
of a searchable repository for orphaned .desktop files?  I'd be happy
to go download .desktops from somewhere if they aren't already
included.

-- 
Ryan W Sims