GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 700149
gnome-control-center 3.8.x and trunk. Please do not make the integration of GNOME on source based distributions from hard to impossible
Last modified: 2013-05-13 07:20:39 UTC
This bug is about automatic dependences used in gnome-control-center's configure.ac file. Please use either mandatory dependencies and optional dependencies only. The prefered way for the source based distributions is to deal with optional dependencies. The automatic dependencies on the other side are evil! A more detailed explanation can be found here: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/qa/automagic.xml Here is an example of automatic dependence from the configure.ac file: # Check for libmm-glib for ModemManager1 support PKG_CHECK_MODULES(MM_GLIB, mm-glib, [have_libmm_glib=yes], have_libmm_glib=no) if test "x$have_libmm_glib" = xno ; then AC_MSG_WARN(*** Network panel will not be built with ModemManager1 support (libmm-glib not found) ***) else AC_DEFINE(HAVE_MM_GLIB, 1, [Defined if libmm-glib is available]) fi AM_CONDITIONAL(HAVE_MM_GLIB, test "x$have_libmm_glib" = "xyes") For now the issues regarding the stabilization of the modemmanager (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688238#c24 also on binary-based distributions https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/modemmanager/+bug/1123302), combined with the automatic dependencies issues turned into in one of the BLOCKERS, which makes the integration of GNOME 3.8.x especially on gentoo very hard. Therefore, this is one of the reasons, why GNOME 3.8 is hard masked on gentoo. Based on the above said, please do not make the dependency on modemmanager mandatory!!!
Created attachment 243885 [details] [review] patch proposal
Created attachment 243886 [details] [review] patch proposal for optional kerberos support
Created attachment 243887 [details] [review] patch proposal for optional modemmanager support
Review of attachment 243885 [details] [review]: Absolutely not. The only optional dependencies are optional on non-Linux, so the package can keep on building on FreeBSD for example. Making those optional is not planned, or wanted.
Review of attachment 243886 [details] [review]: Kerberos support is not optional, as mentioned above.
Review of attachment 243887 [details] [review]: ModemManager should be a hard requirement on platforms where it is available (eg. Linux).
gnome-control-center isn't a bag of bits where you can pick and choose which part of the OS you choose to build. I'm not interested in debugging why it was built without Bluetooth support on such and such distribution because the packager didn't see the need for it. Same goes for color, Kerberos support, support for 3G modems, wacom tablets, or online accounts. I'm leaving this open if you want to provide a patch to make ModemManager a requirement on platforms where NetworkManager is available.
Actually, I see that bug 700145 is about ModemManager's configure checks already. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 700145 ***