[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#506406: xfce4: apt bug causes gdm to pull in unneeded/unwanted gnome dependencies

[Yves-Alexis Perez]

On lun, 2009-01-05 at 13:31 +0100, Frans Pop wrote:
> On Monday 05 January 2009, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> > > Reason is that tasksel makes use of the Task: fields in the Packages
> > > file, not the task files included in tasksel itself (which,
> > > simplified, are only used to update the Packages file).
> >
> > Ha, crap. And I guess the Task: order isn't reliable?
> 
> The order of packages in the Packages file is reliable (alphabetical), but 
> I'm not sure how exactly that translates to the order in which tasksel 
> will list packages when it calls aptitude.
> 
> > > Would replacing gdm by xdm solve the problem (see #510422)?
> >
> > Well, I guess so.
> 
> Could you (or someone else from the desktop teams) test this?

Well, testing the desktop task not really, especially if it uses
Packages files. But we can test installing xdm on top of xfce4. It'll
work (but as there's no way to chose session from xdm, it may be more
painful for end users then using gdm, as the correct way to start Xfce
is to run startxfce4 and not “just“ running the registered session
manager (which is the case by default on *dm). 

> 
> > I'd like some comments from other pkg-xfce team 
> > members, but if it's not too late, that would be ok.
> 
> There is a slight risk of incompatibility with tasksel.

What do you mean?
> 
> > I didn't use xdm since quite some time, but does it uses a desktop-base
> > theme by default, these days?
> 
> No idea. You are supposed to be the desktop people here...
> 
Uh, oh, well, yeah, sorry :)
Installed xdm, it just look awful. I don't know about xdm themes, but
I'm not sure cooking an xdm desktop-base theme would be done easily.

Simon Huggins told me on IRC that you talked about this issue and that
in tasksel tasks (tasksel/tasks/xfce-desktop for example) Keys: and
Packages: stuff were treated differently, and that we might have a
chance there. Could you elaborate on this?

Cheers,
-- 
Yves-Alexis