Hi all,
A few weeks ago we produced this:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FBmdtwDH6WHaLBfy6yqYqjEd3IA5GBEDy...
which is a list of all the desktop applications and addons that share
package names in Fedora.
The core problem is that users click "Remove" on "Akonadi Console" in
either Apper or GNOME Software and then find that an application that
they wanted to keep "KOrganizer" has gone too! So they re-install
"KOrganizer" and the "Akonadi Console" item appears magically. The
confused user then files a bug :)
Splitting things up into subpackages containing the correct binary and
the .desktop file, depending on a -common package would fix things,
and is what most of the software in that shared document has already
done.
The alternative is to add NoDisplay=true to the desktop file for
something like Akonadi Console that might want to be hidden in the
menus, or blacklist akonadiconsole.desktop from the metadata parser
completely. The other fix we can do is to "merge" the child
applications into a parent application, e.g. we merged git-dag into
git-cola so only the latter is shown in the software center. This
isn't ideal as then you hide the very thing the user might be looking
for (although, we do inherit the merged applications keywords and
mimetypes for searching).
In an ideal world we should split up the kicad, kipi-plugins and
kdepim packages into 4+ subpackages each, but I wanted to know what
you all thought of the proposal before I filed a bug or worked on a
patch. Ideas welcome, thanks.
Richard.