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

[Frans Pop]

On Monday 05 January 2009, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> It should at one point run:
>   tasksel install xfce-desktop
>
> But according to tasksel --test install xfce-desktop, in fact it should
> run:
>   aptitude -q --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y \
>    install desktop gnome-desktop xfce-desktop

That's user error.

What you are missing is that tasksel relies on the value of 
tasksel/desktop to "translate" a selection of "desktop environment" to 
desktop + XXX-desktop tasks.

What you need to do is:
# echo "tasksel tasksel/desktop string xfce" | debconf-set-selections
# tasksel --test install xfce-desktop

That should end up as:
  aptitude -q --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y \
     install ~t^desktop ~t^xfce-desktop

It is quite likely that the "install" option of tasksel does not really 
interact nicely with the desktop tests.

You can also check what will happen by running tasksel interactively and 
selecting the desktop task + the "manual package selection" option.

> Yeah, that's not your problem. Default session stuff in gdm/xdm only
> runs whatever session manager is configured, which, on an Xfce install
> is xfce4-session. So it runs xfce4-session, which is not the perfect
> way to run Xfce. The better way is to run startxfce4, and we have a
> config file to run that correctly, it's selectable in gdm but not
> really in xdm.

As that is totally unintuitive to end-users I don't think that's a real 
argument for or against xdm.

> Yeah but it could at least have the Lenny wallpaper which is in
> desktop-base :)

And from my tests desktop-base _does_ get installed, so you still get the 
lenny wallpaper after login. Is having a pretty logon screen really that 
important to you? I personally really couldn't care less, *especially* 
when I select a light desktop.

> > So, switching from gdm to xdm may work, but there is no real way to
> > test that. My advise is to just leave things as they are for Lenny
> > and just live with the issue.
>
> Yeah but having to install that many gnome stuff on Xfce install is
> quite painful. I'll try to see if I can do anything on that.

So you'd prefer to switch to xdm after all? I really don't think there is 
any other solution.