Bug#1026244: gnome-remote-desktop: No support for VNC

[Andreas Henriksson]

Hello Ben Westover,

Thanks for your bug report. Followup comments below.

On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 12:40:43AM +0000, Ben Westover wrote:
> Package: gnome-remote-desktop
> X-Debbugs-Cc: me at benthetechguy.net
> Version: 43.2-1
> Severity: important
> 
> Dear Maintainer,
> 
> When I run grdctl, none of the VNC-related options are available. I see
> that the Debian packaging has chosen not to build it. Why is this? 

I've looked at debian/rules[1] and the debian packaging git repo[2]
which made me start doubting that "Debian" has choosen to not build VNC
support.

I looked at the build log[3] and indeed noticed that VNC support was
disabled at configure/build time.

I then looked up what the default setting[4] for VNC was and saw
that it was false (disabled) by default.

All of the above information can be found linked from the package
tracker page[5].

I then went to look at the upstream git history[6] and the commit
which disables the option, which has the following explanation on
why:

```
RDP offers better performance, better privacy, and better client
app availability.

Also, gnome-control-center 42 only advertises RDP, not VNC

Therefore, we recommend distros & users use RDP and don't recommend VNC.
```

We could ofcourse override upstreams default settings, but given
the above recommendation from upstream there would need to be
a really good motivation to why we should do that!

> I need to use VNC for my job, and gnome-remote-desktop is the only
> solution I know of that supports Wayland well.

Why do you need VNC (instead of RDP)?

> 
> At the very least, if adding VNC back to the package isn't an option,
> can it at least be removed from the package description?
> 
>  > This daemon enables GNOME to offer remote desktop sharing using VNC
>  > with PipeWire.
> 
> It's a bit misleading to say your package supports VNC when it doesn't.

The package description was likely put together when this was initially
packaged. As Debian is a volunteer effort, please consider submitting
a merge-request on salsa.debian.org with a new updated description
(which you can probably help scrape together based on an updated
description that might be found on the upstream webpage for
gnome-remote-desktop).

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson


[1]: https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/g/gnome-remote-desktop/rules-43.2-1
[2]: https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-remote-desktop/-/commits/debian/master/debian
[3]: https://buildd.debian.org/status/fetch.php?pkg=gnome-remote-desktop&arch=amd64&ver=43.2-1&stamp=1670360554&raw=0
[4]: https://sources.debian.org/src/gnome-remote-desktop/43.2-1/meson_options.txt/#L18
[5]: https://tracker.debian.org/gnome-remote-desktop
[6]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop/-/commit/55ce55afa1ddb502d4c8e13ae813f348d5f76402