getting rid of vendor prefixes for desktop files

[Matthias Clasen]

I'd like to discuss the idea of getting rid of vendor prefixes for
desktop files in Fedora. Right now, we install desktop files with a
mixture of vendor prefixes: gnome-, fedora-, redhat-, nothing. 

These prefixes really add no value, and cause actual breakage, since
Fedora is (afaik) the only distro adding vendor prefixes, so we are the
ones that get bitten by upstream changes that don't take vendor prefixes
into account. 

The recent breakage that made me write this mail is that the new
gnome-session in rawhide has a list of mandatory session components
stored in gconf, and one of these components was 'nautilus', so it went
looking for nautilus.desktop - which doesn't exist, since we ship
gnome-nautilus.desktop.

Another problem caused by these prefixes is that overlaying a self-built
gnome, e.g. a jhbuild tree on top of a fedora installation gives you
everything doubled in the menus. Once with a vendor prefix, and once
without, instead of the indended effect of the self built tree hiding
the installed desktop files.

Thus, I'd like to propose that we change the packaging guidelines to
stop recommending the addition of a vendor prefix, and remove existing
vendor prefixes in F10. This will cause a mild one-time pain for
existing users with customized menus. We can probably discuss ways to
avoid that.

Comments ?


Matthias