#247 drop fedora vendor tag from desktop files from F19+
Closed: Fixed None Opened 11 years ago by pnemade.

I would like to request to drop fedora vendor tag from the desktop files. Currently, there are almost more than 600 packages in F19 that carries fedora vendor tag.

Can we add following to Guidelines ?
"Since Fedora 19 neither existing nor new packages should add vendor tag to desktop files"


Ages ago we recognized that adding vendor tags was a bad thing and forbade it from new packages. However, the issue of breakage when removing it from existing packages came up, and we settled on this text:

"For new packages, do not apply a vendor tag to desktop files. Existing packages that use a vendor tag must continue to do so for the life of the package. This is mostly for the sake of menu-editing (which bases off of .desktop file/path names)."

Adding the proposed line would certainly conflict, so at minimum there will be changes to that paragraph as well. Does the issue pointed out there not exist any longer?

I agree what is written is clear in current Guidelines but just trying to see if FPC or fedora packagers can work to try to get rid of fedora vendor tag from existing packages also?

That would kind of depend on the answer to the question I posed at the end of my comment. We need to know what breaks when vendor tags are removed. If nothing breaks, great, but that has not been my experience. I've had issues with icons going missing in desktop panels because the name of the desktop file changed when the vendor tag was removed.

From the discussion on the mailing list, I think that all the same things would be likely to break http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/packaging/2013-January/008880.html by changing those as in the past. However, we are now seeing real breakage due to the poor design of the vendor feature: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/packaging/2013-January/008867.html So it's less attractive to keep what's only there for legacy reasons.

Changing this would be a one-time breakage for the package. Unfortunately, if packages were updated at different times, users will experience a stream of breaking packages until they have updated all of the packages that had vendor prefixes on their system. Perhaps getting rid of vendor needs to be a Fedora Feature so that it can be coordinated and fixed en masse by a group of provenpackagers?

We cannot fix this with symlinks, because that will cause duplicate entries. If we rename existing files, we know it will break some Desktop environments that parse or interpret the .desktop file.

So, if someone figures out what we can do in an upgrade scenario to ensure that things continue to "just work" without user intervention, then I think it makes sense to drop the vendor prefix nonsense. Otherwise, I don't see how we'll be able to (even if we need to).

Someone will need to run through every DE we ship to ensure that upgrades (where the .desktop files are renamed) work seamlessly, or at the very least, the ones we make spins for.

No further updates here on my request and now I saw desktop packages dropped gnome vendor prefix. This is really not good that some packages are allowed to drop prefix and others not.

If gnome packages can drop vendor prefix then other packages dependent on gnome environment can drop fedora vendor tag.

The breakage that we incur due to a one-time renaming event is really minor, compared to the permanent breakage that happens due to deviation from upstream. The desktop file names are the primary identifier that application are referred to in multiple places; we are not even attempting to patch up all the references to upstream desktop file names.

I'd be fine with trying to do this as a one-time flag day in F19. Do we think we have enough provenpackager resources to accomplish this?

Of course, we'd probably run into complaints/issues from those that want one-spec-file-for-5-releases.

Conditionalizting the "fix" in
{{{
%if 0%{?fedora} > 18
...
%endif
}}}
should be easy enough

Guidelines will be amended to say that for Fedora 19 and beyond, the vendor tag must not be used. If it was being used in a previous release, it may continue to be used for that previous release, but must be removed in Fedora 19. New packages must not add the vendor tag for any release.

(+1:8, 0:0, -1:0)

Thank you all for your views and votes.

Addendum:

Packagers are reminded that they must not change the name of the desktop file in a stable Fedora release.

(+1:5 ,0:0, -1:0)

I've taken the "let's coordinate an F19 flag day for this" to a [https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/1077 fesco ticket] so it's not forgotten.

Can we have Packaging Guidelines page modified to include above so that I can point to the maintainers/add in a changelog for commits?

You can point them at this ticket for now (since it was approved). I'll try to get this written up in the guidelines proper this afternoon unless another FPC member beats me to it :-)

Guideline change written up:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#desktop-file-install_usage

Let me know (via this ticket or on IRC) if you think the wording needs any clarification.

This is ready to announce.

Metadata Update from @rdieter:
- Issue assigned to spot

7 years ago

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