Re: Proposal for reducing the number of unremovable apps in GNOME Software

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

On Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 8:03 PM, <mcatanzaro gnome org> wrote:

Hi,

Currently about half of the GNOME core apps are unremovable in GNOME Software. It's the set of apps that are not new additions to core over the past two years, but at this point that's entirely arbitrary. So we need to find a better criterion for determining what should and should not be unremovable.

In the interests of allowing users to replace core apps with their preferred alternatives, I'd like to propose that only the most essential applications -- stuff that cannot plausibly be packaged as a properly-sandboxed flatpak -- should remain unremovable. Specifically, I propose that <mandatory_for_desktop>GNOME</mandatory_for_desktop> be removed from the appstream metainfo for all of our apps except the following four:

* gnome-screenshot
* gnome-software
* nautilus
* yelp

This matches one of Javier's proposed moduleset changes [1].

Thoughts?

I don't see the relation between sandboxable and unremovable. The argument for making some things unremovable has always been that their absence leads to a broken system. I can see how that applies to gnome-software (can't install apps anymore when it is missing) and to yelp (every apps help menuitem is broken when yelp is missing). But I don't see how this applies to gnome-screenshot (as Florian pointed out, the keyboard shortcuts for sceenshots don't rely on it anymore) or to nautilus (no icons on the desktop in GNOME3).

It is a separate question whether an app should be installed by default - I would argue that all four should be.