Scope of GNOME MRU

I found a simpler base list that we can use. Debian provides a tracker for each GNOME release based on what GNOME itself decides to release. It is simpler than trying to verify multiple files in a GNOME git repo and the GNOME git repo doesn’t handle build-depends well. The Debian tracker just provides a prettier view of the GNOME release metadata.

This allows the sets to be updated over time as GNOME makes changes to what they release.

For Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, it’s https://people.debian.org/~fpeters/gnome/debian-gnome-42-status.html
For Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, it’s https://people.debian.org/~fpeters/gnome/debian-gnome-3.36-status.html

Ignore the unrelated Telepathy section.

From that base list, I propose these exceptions:

Additions

  • evolution
  • evolution-ews
  • file-roller
  • gedit
  • gnome-terminal
  • gnome-tweaks
  • seahorse
  • everything that the gnome-games apt package directly depends on

Removals

  • vala

GNOME Shell

Starting with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, we removed most GNOME Shell extensions but left ones that require some system integration. We are now doing a basic smoke test of those extensions as part of our SRUs. Here’s a recent example.

Mutter

As a shared critical component with Ubuntu Budgie, we also ensure that new Mutter SRUs are tested on Ubuntu Budgie (so far, the testing has been done directly by Ubuntu Budgie testers).

Apps Note

By the way, years ago, GNOME used to include a lot more optional apps in their release set but they reduced the set to a more basic set that they recommend to be installed by default. That’s how evolution and the GNOME games fell out of the set.

Diff from previous work

Here’s a diff of just the base set for 22.04 LTS compared to the earlier proposed list. It’s a little noisy because the earlier proposed list included the exceptions.

--- old
-accerciser
 adwaita-icon-theme
 at-spi2-atk
 at-spi2-core
 atk1.0
+atkmm1.6
 baobab
+gnome-calls
+fonts-cantarell
 cheese
-clutter-gst
+clutter-1.0
+clutter-gst-3.0
 clutter-gtk
-clutter
+cogl
+dconf
 dconf-editor
 devhelp
 eog
-epiphany
+epiphany-browser
 evince
 evolution-data-server
-evolution
-evolution-ews
-file-roller
 folks
+gcab
 gcr
 gdk-pixbuf
 gdm3
-gedit
+geocode-glib
+gexiv2
+gfbgraph
 gjs
+glib2.0
 glib-networking
-glib
-gnome-2048
+glibmm2.4
+gmime
 gnome-autoar
 gnome-backgrounds
 gnome-bluetooth
+gnome-bluetooth3
 gnome-boxes
 gnome-builder
 gnome-calculator
 gnome-calendar
 gnome-characters
-gnome-chess
 gnome-clocks
 gnome-color-manager
+gnome-connections
+gnome-console
 gnome-contacts
 gnome-control-center
 gnome-desktop
 gnome-disk-utility
 gnome-font-viewer
-gnome-games-app
-gnome-getting-started-docs
 gnome-initial-setup
 gnome-keyring
-gnome-klotski
 gnome-logs
-gnome-mahjongg
 gnome-maps
 gnome-menus
 gnome-music
-gnome-nibbles
 gnome-online-accounts
-gnome-online-miners
 gnome-photos
 gnome-remote-desktop
-gnome-robots
-gnome-screenshot
 gnome-session
 gnome-settings-daemon
 gnome-shell
 gnome-shell-extensions
 gnome-software
-gnome-sudoku
 gnome-system-monitor
-gnome-taquin
-gnome-terminal
-gnome-tetravex
+gnome-text-editor
 gnome-tour
 gnome-user-docs
 gnome-user-share
 gnome-video-effects
 gnome-weather
 gobject-introspection
+libgom
 grilo
 grilo-plugins
 gsettings-desktop-schemas
 gsound
-gst-plugins-base
-gtk+-3
+gspell
+gssdp
+gtk4
+gtk+3.0
 gtk-doc
-gtkmm-3
-gtksourceview
 gtk-vnc
-gvfs-daemon
-iagno
+gtkmm3.0
+gtksourceview4
+gtksourceview5
+gupnp
+gupnp-av
+gupnp-dlna
+gvfs
 json-glib
+jsonrpc-glib
+libadwaita-1
+libchamplain
 libdazzle
-libgweather
-libhandy-0
-libhandy
+libgdata
+libgee-0.8
+libgnomekbd
+libgsf
+libgtop2
+libgweather4
+libgxps
+libhandy-1
+libmediaart
+libnma
 libnotify
+libpeas
 librsvg
 libsecret
-libsoup
+libsigc++-2.0
+libsoup2.4
+libsoup3
+mm-common
 mutter
 nautilus
+orca
+pango1.0
+pangomm
+phodav
+pyatspi
 pygobject
-quadrapassel
+librest
 rygel
-seahorse
 simple-scan
-startup-notification
-sushi
-swell-foop
-tali
+gnome-sushi
+sysprof
 totem
 totem-pl-parser
-tracker-2
-tracker-miners-2
+tracker
 tracker-miners
-tracker
+vala
+vte2.91
+xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
 yelp
 yelp-tools
 yelp-xsl
+zenity
+
+Special additions:
+evolution
+evolution-ews
+file-roller
+gedit
+gnome-terminal
+gnome-tweaks
+seahorse
+everything that the gnome-games apt package directly depends on
+
+Special removals:
+vala
2 Likes

The Debian tracker parses files like this:
https://download.gnome.org/teams/releng/42.2/versions

Robie suggested that it may be interesting to diff those files to see changes over time.

2 Likes

The seemingly doubled gnome-bluetooth entry is that:
core:gnome-bluetooth:42.0:
core:gnome-bluetooth:3.34.5:

1 Like

The seemingly doubled gnome-bluetooth entry

I asked the Debian tracker maintainer to use the Debian package names instead of upstream’s names and he already made that update for the 42 tracker.

So I updated my diff from comment 42 now too.

3 Likes

That looks like a good set to me. It includes some things that I don’t think we particularly care about (particularly gnome-console), but GNOME obviously cares about them and exercising the MRE exception for a package is an indication that we do care about it :smiley:.

Having a diff over time would be nice, but I don’t think that’s a blocker.

I think this is a good methodology and list to use for the MRE documentation.

I think the next step will be to update the MRE wiki page to point to the Debian tracker and add the extra documented exceptions?

I’ve now updated the GNOME MRE wiki page. Please check that what I’ve recorded matches your understanding of the consensus.

Thanks @raof! This looks good to me, though there are still some steps that I think we need to do to complete this. Maybe for the desktop team?

  1. I’d like to be able to quickly determine if a particular package is part of the list or not, in order to actually process these SRUs. Right now that seems tricky.

  2. Changes to the list expansion are expected and I assume a single member of the SRU team will decide if they make sense or not as MRE SRUs are reviewed. However this isn’t possible without being able to see the full expansion that was originally approved (ie. as it stands right now) and how it has changed. This is what I mean when I say I want an audit trail. Otherwise, we’d be in the odd position where upstream can effectively change our list without us noticing.

  3. Right now it looks like specific test plans are being proposed individually in SRU bugs of MRE uploads. I suggest these are moved (following SRU team approval) to the wiki page. That way they wouldn’t have to be reviewed every time, which should reduce bikeshedding, save some copying and pasting and and make the review process smoother.

For (1) and (2) - maybe what we want is to our own script to parse the upstream metadata and map to source package names, and then commit the output (per release) to ubuntu-archive-tools? We don’t expect the list to change within a release, only between releases.

I guess the stretch goal here is for sru-review to grow support for emitting “This package falls under the $PACKAGE MRE; see $URL for details” on the relevant packages…

I’ve now done the script to parse the upstream metadata and output a list of packages covered by the GNOME MRE, and committed the results (16.04, 18.04, 20.04, and 22.04).

Please give both the script and the lists a once-over; I’m happy with what it generates, but may well have missed something.

Integrating a check for when a package is on this list (or other MRE lists) into the SRU tooling is still a stretch goal :wink:

Update update: I’ve generated the list for 22.10. This has required small updates to the script (to handle newly-duplicated packages)

2 Likes

Do we have a diff from previous one? /me lazy

EDIT, here it is:

--- jammy	2022-11-01 17:26:19.000000000 +0100
+++ kinetic	2022-11-01 17:25:42.000000000 +0100
@@ -1,8 +1,6 @@
 adwaita-icon-theme
 aisleriot
-at-spi2-atk
 at-spi2-core
-atk1.0
 atkmm1.6
 baobab
 cheese
@@ -31,7 +29,6 @@
 gedit
 geocode-glib
 gexiv2
-gfbgraph
 gjs
 glib-networking
 glib2.0
@@ -40,7 +37,6 @@
 gnome-2048
 gnome-autoar
 gnome-backgrounds
-gnome-bluetooth
 gnome-bluetooth3
 gnome-boxes
 gnome-builder
@@ -112,7 +108,6 @@
 json-glib
 jsonrpc-glib
 libadwaita-1
-libchamplain
 libdazzle
 libgdata
 libgee-0.8
@@ -126,10 +121,12 @@
 libmediaart
 libnma
 libnotify
+libpanel
 libpeas
 librest
 librsvg
 libsecret
+libshumate
 libsigc++-2.0
 libsoup2.4
 libsoup3
@@ -150,12 +147,13 @@
 swell-foop
 sysprof
 tali
+template-glib
 totem
 totem-pl-parser
 tracker
 tracker-miners
 vte
+xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
 yelp
 yelp-tools
 yelp-xsl
-zenity
3 Likes

Thanks for working on moving things forward Chris, we will review the script and the list.

On the SRU verification would it work for the SRU team if the instructions are stored in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/TestPlans/ (where ‘sourcename’ is the name of the Ubuntu source package formatted wikistyle, GnomeTextEditor for gnome-text-editor is an existing example).

We would create the pages from now on as we SRU packages which don’t have one yet.

1 Like

I created a category for our current test cases. We commit to keep adding new ones as we prepare SRUs: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CategoryDesktopTestPlans

raof, thank you for your work on the script! The output matches what I expect.

2 Likes

Having a place to keep test plans would be great - thanks @seb128 and @jbicha!

Just one note - we (SRU team) can definitely consider them case by case per SRU. But it would be better if each could be reviewed approved by the SRU team, if we could note that somewhere such that it is invalidated if there are significant changes. Then we could provide better consistency since if a test plan is already “SRU team approved” it won’t need to be reviewed again, and you wouldn’t be surprised with requests for changes or amendments if a different SRU team member reviews your upload. But then this needs to be done in a way that a future SRU team member can confirm that the test plan is the same one that was previously approved by a previous SRU team member.

I don’t mind what mechanism we use, but could we arrange that please? Since there will be a collection, perhaps we could review the first time a particular test plan is used, and then leave some kind of approval note?

I added a section to the bottom of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/TestPlans/gjs with an idea for how pages could be marked as reviewed. But it’s a decision for the SRU Team how those pages should be marked and reviewed.

2 Likes

What else is needed to complete this discussion?

I’ve refreshed the MRE list for lunar here. In doing so, the script needed additional handling of the libgweather->libgweather4 source transition, and I realised that the previous kinetic list included libgweather, which is not actually in the kinetic archives.

So, with that script refresh, the two diffs are:

--- a/kinetic
+++ b/kinetic
@@ -115,7 +115,7 @@ libgnomekbd
 libgom
 libgsf
 libgtop2
-libgweather
+libgweather4
 libgxps
 libhandy
 libmediaart
--- kinetic     2023-05-24 11:36:05.447903500 +1000
+++ lunar       2023-05-24 11:28:12.252708977 +1000
@@ -109,7 +109,6 @@
 jsonrpc-glib
 libadwaita-1
 libdazzle
-libgdata
 libgee-0.8
 libgnomekbd
 libgom

Also, I’m still on the hook for some SRU tooling to automatically detect when an SRU is for a package with an MRE.

Hm. I was going to say that I think we’ve not yet satisfied Robbie’s “we can tell that the test plan is the same as the approved one” requirement, but on second thoughts, test plans on the Wiki satisfy that (in the same way that all the other test plans on the wiki do) - if the last edited tags match the review time and reviewer.

So, I think what is needed to complete the discussion here is for us, on the SRU team, to go through the test plans as we process GNOME MRE SRUs and approve them or request changes until we can approve them.

To get that started: a review of the Mutter test plan:
In general, I’d like something more structured than “verify things continue to work well”

As a Wayland compositor, Mutter is particularly hardware-dependent and a critical piece of infrastructure. I think we should call out specific testing on whatever set of platforms we think are appropriate (especially since around half the bugs on this particular mutter SRU are explicitly "mutter does $BAD_THING on $SPECIFIC_HARDWARE).

  • As a first cut of hardware we explicitly want to support, I suggest testing on:
    • A mesa driver (if we’re only doing one, i915 is probably the right choice; if we can do two, both i915 and amdgpu)
    • The most recent stable NVIDIA driver series (bonus points: most recent and oldest)
    • RPi? Definitely for the current SRU, as it contains an explicit fix for RPi behaviour; I’m not clear exactly how much the desktop team supports RPi-on-the-desktop, though.

The current SRU should probably have explicit testing on multi-monitor setups. I’d be inclined to request it as a part of the generic testing plan, too.

What other aspects of Mutter are high risk, or low cost to test? Scaling factors != 1.0 & 2.0? Mixed scaling? Video playback? Are gnome-shell extensions tied into Mutter, or is that just gnome-shell/gjs?

It should be fairly quick to exclude any really serious breakage on any given platform - just log in, bring up the spread, run a video player, run glmark2-es2-wayland (on Wayland sessions) should verify that a given platform hasn’t been critically regressed. I would therefore expect the major problem in testing to be access to hardware; what does the Desktop team have access to?

1 Like

And a review of the GNOME Shell test plan.

This looks pretty good to me. Again, I’d prefer something more concrete than “verify that things continue to work well” for Test Case 1, but I understand that it’s pretty easy to test and maybe low-value to precisely specify, so I’m OK with that.

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me where the list of extensions was for Test Case 2; I’ve edited the wiki page to make this more obvious (to me, at least!).

1 Like

In reviewing a gjs SRU just now, I noticed that it didn’t link to the test plan @jbicha wrote up above and nor was that linked from the main GNOME exception documentation. So I’ve adjusted these.

I’ve also written up my idea of how we’ve agreed test plans and approvals will work. @jbicha please could you review?

On the gjs test plan itself, it looks fine to me but I’m not particularly familiar with the area. @raof please could you review it?