Moduleset review

[Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro gnome org>]

Hi,

Apologies for the long mail....

As a goal for 3.20, I'd like to complete the long-overdue moduleset
review proposed by Mathias at [1], in accordance with the moduleset
guidelines proposed by Allan at [2].

[1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2014-July/msg00053.htm
l
[2] https://wiki.gnome.org/AllanDay/Modulesets

The guidelines at [2] seem uncontroversial to me, at least in an
upstream context. I propose we adopt these. The basic idea is that
anything we expect to be installed by default goes in core, and
everything else goes in apps.

What is a core app? Core apps must have generic, unbranded names (e.g.
"Text Editor" not "gedit") except possibly in the About dialog, where
branding is not encouraged by acceptable (a concession mainly for
gedit). They are not removable in gnome-software (but perhaps it should
be possible to "disable" them for a particular user account by dropping
a desktop file into ~/.local/share/applications; a topic for a
different discussion). They must live upstream on git.gnome.org and
closely adhere to the GNOME HIG. Distros will be encouraged to install
all the core apps by default, and encouraged to not install our non-
core apps, though obviously we ultimately have no control over this.

I suggest we consider these guidelines on a case-by-case basis for each
individual app. Javier has volunteered to help implement any moduleset
changes we agree on, so the challenge for us it just to agree on the
changes. Here are my proposed removals from core, as a starting point
for this discussion. They're based on, but not identical to, Matthias's
proposal:

 * network-manager-applet should presumably be dropped from core to
world; that's a GNOME 2 thing, right?
 * gnome-packagekit should be dropped from core to apps, and replaced
with gnome-software.
 * empathy should be dropped from core to apps.
 * gnome-dictionary should be dropped from core to apps.
 * gnome-system-log should be dropped from core to apps, and replaced
with gnome-logs.
 * gucharmap should be dropped from core to apps, and replaced with
gnome-characters.

Additionally, I believe the content apps Documents/Photos/Music/Videos
should be in core, but also that we should have only a single app in
core to handle a particular type of file:

 * eog should be dropped from core to apps and replaced with gnome-
photos once gnome-photos is considered to be appropriately mature (e.g.
can open local files).
 * evince should be dropped from core to apps and replaced with gnome-
documents once gnome-documents is able to open local files.
 * gnome-music should be added to core once considered to be
appropriately mature.
 * totem should remain in core.

We should also promote some apps from apps to core. I'm positive we
want to promote:

 * file-roller (temporary, until nautilus learns to handle archives)
 * gedit (renamed to Text Editor in the desktop file)
 * gnome-initial-setup (this is not an app)
 * orca (this is not an app)

We should also discuss the following modules currently in apps. I don't
myself propose moving these to core, but we should definitely discuss
them. Except for gnome-calendar and gnome-todo, all of the apps below
are currently shipped by default in Fedora:

 * bijiben
 * cheese
 * gnome-calendar
 * gnome-clocks
 * gnome-boxes
 * gnome-maps
 * gnome-todo
 * gnome-weather
 * seahorse

Javier has actually created a core-apps moduleset so as to avoid having
GUI apps in core itself, but this doesn't really affect anything.

Along with this, we will want to review and clean up our Bugzilla
components to match our moduleset definitions. It's frustrating to find
core apps like Software hidden under Applications in Bugzilla. That
cleanup can be done after we finish our moduleset reorganization.

Comments on this huge proposal are much appreciated.

Michael