GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 787029
Support non-GNOME environments
Last modified: 2018-01-06 13:38:29 UTC
Please don't restrict the GNOME Photos .desktop to GNOME. I don't think any registered desktop environment except for KDE offers its own photo app. Debian and Ubuntu have been carrying this patch for years.
Created attachment 358786 [details] [review] org.gnome.Photos.desktop: Show in menus everywhere
Review of attachment 358786 [details] [review]: Thing is that Photos does expect to be only used in GNOME. eg., it uses org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Housekeeping:EmptyTrash, relies on gnome-online-accounts, etc.. The moment we make it show up in other sessions people will complain about compatibility.
Any concluding remarks or this deserves to be kept open for others to notice?
I wanted to write a lengthier explanation, since comment 2 was scribbled in a hurry. GNOME Photos' raison d'etre is to provide a first class experience for accessing, organizing and sharing photographs on GNOME. Hence the GNOME prefix in its name. We want to do so without being shackled by the portability concerns of working in non-GNOME environments. It is already difficult to offer a first-class experience on all the different kernels that people run GNOME on. eg., Tracker has Linux-specific code to reduce its CPU and I/O priorities that don't work on *BSD or anything that's not Linux. Then there are distributions that tweak GNOME in ways that completely break GNOME Photos and similar content applications. eg., Ubuntu disables Tracker. Does that mean that GNOME Photos should be hidden on non-Linux kernels and Ubuntu? Maybe? Maybe not? Teaching Tracker to work in the background on non-Linux kernels might be something that's achievable with a reasonable amount of effort. It does degrade the UX on non-Linux, but is not an existential crisis. Maybe it is possible for Ubuntu to package GNOME Photos in a way that enables Tracker upon installation? I don't know. I haven't tried Ubuntu recently. Regardless, since Ubuntu decided to disable Tracker, one can reasonably expect Ubuntu to deal with the consequences of that decision. The general idea is that upstream GNOME expects to be shipped in a certain way, and GNOME Photos' goal is to offer the best possible experience for such set-ups. If it doesn't, then it is either a bug or a missing feature - something that should be acted upon. Now, if we remove the OnlyShowIn key from the upstream desktop file, then it means that upstream claims to work on every environment that's out there. That's simply not going to match reality. Any environment that (a) disables Tracker, (b) doesn't offer GNOME Online Accounts, (c) doesn't have gnome-settings-daemon, (d) doesn't use the WM_CLASS or application ID to retrieve the application icon (bug 790200) will break the app, and when that happens users are likely to blame the application for it. If GNOME Photos works on non-GNOME, great. If it doesn't, then it's probably something not worth fixing. This can change if some other non-GNOME entity with the exact same UX goals as GNOME shows up, and decides to contribute resources to improve GNOME Photos. This would mean working on both the application and its underlying stack, fixing bugs, implementing features, etc.. In short, participating in the necessary heavy lifting. Until then, compatibility with non-GNOME is a distraction, and is codified by the OnlyShowIn key.
*** Bug 790200 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 728661 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 790133 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***