Bug#1033274: gnome-session: recommends xdg-desktop-portal-gnome and not depends

[Simon McVittie]

On Tue, 29 Aug 2023 at 10:32:23 +0100, Pablo Mazzini wrote:
> > Therefore, the desktop session needs to depend on the portal that has the
> > best integration.
> 
> Why does this dependency needs to be specified in the gnome-session package?
> Wouldn't gnome-core be a better place to specify this?

gnome-core is a somewhat complete GNOME session with various utilities
included (an image viewer, a calculator, software updates, a terminal...),
while gnome-session is the minimal GNOME session containing only the
necessary infrastructure to log in to a working GNOME interface.
Their scope is rather different.

x-d-p-gnome is more like behind-the-scenes desktop environment plumbing
than a user-facing application: various applications will not work
correctly without it. It also isn't very large. Having a working portal
backend is becoming similar to having a working D-Bus session bus,
or a working fd.o Notifications interface, or a working X11 or Wayland
display, or a working sound server: something that apps assume, such
that the app can't work correctly without it.

Let me turn this around: what is your use-case for installing
gnome-session but not x-d-p-gnome, such that logging into a minimal
GNOME session is possible, but applications that require a working portal
backend will not work correctly while logged into that session?

    smcv