[Bug 1797860] Re: Language selection installs too many packages

[Didier Roche]

Hey Gunnar,

After reorganizing the seeds for ubuntu desktop and see which strategy
we are going to take for the new installer (negative layered langpacks,
I can expand on this a little bit later), I think we have a robust story
to avoid the unsync we have between language-selector and the
installer/live image default list.

In disco (note: not available in the daily image which isn't including the langpacks until our livecd-rootfs MP is in production: https://code.launchpad.net/~jibel/livecd-rootfs/add_multi_layered_squashfses_support/+merge/358490)
* Basically, default language selection are now for the ubuntu desktop flavor seed:
https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu-seeds/+git/ubuntu/tree/languages. There are 2 seeds for each language:
- the minimal one, corresponding to the new ubuntu-desktop-minimal package: https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu-seeds/+git/ubuntu/tree/languages/desktop-minimal-de
- the "full" one, which, in addition to the desktop-minimal one has the dictionaries, libreoffice, thunderbird and mozilla translations: https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu-seeds/+git/ubuntu/tree/languages/desktop-de

You can see that input methods are included in some, like the chinese
one: https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu-
seeds/+git/ubuntu/tree/languages/desktop-minimal-zh (we may have some
wrong assignement, if you spot anything, feel free!)

So, the idea would be:
- have, for the default languages, language-selector on ubuntu-desktop using those seeds (probably picking the list at package build time?). It needs to adapt depending on the installed metapackage (ubuntu-desktop-minimal or ubuntu-desktop). Note that ubuntu-desktop installs ubuntu-desktop-minimal.
- expand the heuristic for other languages for ubuntu-desktop-minimal/ubuntu-desktop. We can maybe include the regexp in the seed if that helps? That way, we have a single place where we define all languages support.

In addition to this:
- we remove the magic for "en" (enforcing too many time to install them). It isn't required if installing an other language
- installing one language, do, as of today, install all "deviations", like fr installs fr_FR, fr_CA, fr_BE, even if those are part of other binary packages. The default languages seed should already cover that.

The installer would then only rely on language-support to ensure
everything installed is correctly there.

What do you think? Do you have some time to work on this for this cycle?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1797860

Title:
  Language selection installs too many packages

Status in language-selector package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Multiple issues arise when installing any languages in ubuntu:
  1. if you select en_GB, en_US is selected instead
  2. if you select fr_FR, fr_FR + en_US is selected
  3. As soon as en_US is selected (which is always right now), en is then selected, which in turns requests installing all en_* languages.
  4. ubiquity, if en_US is selected, only install en_US + en packages, but then, check-language-support wants to bring back all en_* variants (hunspell-en-au hunspell-en-ca hunspell-en-gb hunspell-en-za hyphen-en-ca hyphen-en-gb libreoffice-help-en-gb libreoffice-l10n-en-gb libreoffice-l10n-en-za mythes-en-au thunderbird-locale-en-gb in cosmic for instance) which were discared by ubiquity.

  The last point is due to /usr/share/language-tools/language-options reporting needing (in the fr_FR default installation for instance):
  en_US
  fr_FR
  en
  en_AU
  fr
  en_GB
  en_CA

  A big rework/revamp would be needed in language support, account-services and ubiquity, backed up with tests.
  Ideally, the seed and check-language-support will always be in sync, the list of package to install is strictly regulated by check-language-support (which is supposed to be the case below, but we see in 4. that it's not), and we limit the number of components disagreeing in which languages are installed/supported.

  We need to take into account ofc the debian singularirity about
  generated locales.

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