[Packaging] Repackaged DisplayCAL as Dummy Package

[Robie Basak]

Hi Erich,

On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 03:32:18PM -0700, Erich Eickmeyer wrote:
> While I would have created a snap version, I don't have the know-how, and the 
> flatpak version works very well. As such, we'd like to include this flatpak 
> version in Ubuntu Studio. I have packaged and uploaded a "Transitional Dummy 
> Package" of DisplayCAL which installs the flatpak and adds the flathub.org 
> flatpak repository if necessary. Please know that this does NOT install any 
> .deb repositories, and, therefore, does not violate policy.

Thank you for writing up details of your plans and rationale. I can't
express how much I appreciate proper communication and discussion of
unusual things to ensure that everyone understands what is going on.

Presumably you're referring to
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/technical-board/2018-February/002355.html
and similar when you refer to not adding any .deb repositories.

> The justification for this is that the chromium-browser package currently 
> installs the snap of chromium. This is no different, except that it adds a the 
> flathub repository (the defacto-default repository for flatpak) if necessary 
> whereas only one snap repository exists (by design).

There are some differences. Somewhat overlapping in scope, but on the
snaps-in-Ubuntu topic we have:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuSeededSnaps, to try and provide the same
kind of provenance and stability type assurances for snaps that Ubuntu
users get from Ubuntu releases, in the case that snaps are installed in
an image by default.

The Snap Store as a source of software enabled by default comes with the
Ubuntu project wide decision to trust that store by default. The same
doesn't currently exist for Flathub.

The Chromium snap is published by Canonical. Perhaps this should have
been done more formally, but ultimately it's currently the same team who
were publishing Chromium as a deb in Ubuntu previously. On the other
hand, it sounds like the DisplayCAL Flatpak is being published by a
third party that operates completely outside Ubuntu's governance (CoC,
etc).

Chromium already had the exceptional case as a deb that users would
expect deviance from the usual Ubuntu stable release in that they'd get
major behaviour breaking updates without notice (ie. a rolling release),
so a transition to a snap didn't change this. Presumably, the same
doesn't apply to the DisplayCAL Flatpak, and users would be switching
from stability during the lifetime of a stable Ubuntu release to a
rolling release type model for DisplayCAL?

These are some differences that come to mind right now. There may be
others that occur to me later.

I hope that we can find a way forward, but it seems to me that we need
to find some structure and define a more general policy here. That could
be anything from delegating such decisions to individual flavours, to
some general policy requirements to apply universally to make sure that
user expectations are met.

I'd like to thank you again for bringing this up. I think this is worth
figuring out!

Robie
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