Stuff that should be our target going forward ?

Simo Sorce simo at redhat.com
Thu Oct 31 18:57:18 UTC 2013


On Thu, 2013-10-31 at 14:50 -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Simo Sorce (simo at redhat.com) said: 
> > Ok this is just an example that hit me today, so I wonder what is the
> > opinion here, please do not concentrate on the problem at hand but on
> > the general problem it highlights (user experience on server).
> > 
> > In a headless F20 if you "yum install firefox" you get a broken
> > application when you want to run it through an ssh session (I ssh -Y in
> > my VM).
> > 
> > I think this is a reasonably common mode of operation, and yet
> > installing firefox does not bring in all the dependencies it needs to
> > actually work.
> 
> The font problem is more or less like this:
> 
> - The set of fonts required by your app is the union of:
>   - a font for the charset of your current locale
>   - a font for the charset of other locales in use on the system
>   - a font for the charset of any content you may read
> 
> Furthermore, the only automatic font metadata we have is the automated
> reading of font charset coverage that adds (font:lang=<foo>) provides
> to fonts if there is charset coverage. 
> 
> This:
> - can lead to suboptimal provides/false positives
> - has no mechanism for picking the *default* font for a locale
> 
> Hence, the current best practices for running X apps remotely is "if you
> want to run X apps remotely, install the @fonts group", which will include
> default fonts for maximal language coverage.
> 
> It's not great in that it can't be done with strict RPM dependencies, but
> trying to do so would require hardcoding default metadata in multiple places
> (certainly wouldn't want to do each application), 

Can't we create a Provides: tag and make it a dependency for firefox ?

Then make a package that has a 'reasonable default' of Requires: and
make it Provide that tag, different spins may decide to have different
packages provide the special tag.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York



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