`armbian-desktop` package is severely inconsistent across arch/appgroups/config_base

[rpardini]

What happened?

Ok so here's an old impasse. Hold on to your hat.
config/optional/architectures/amd64/_config/desktop/_all_distributions/appgroups/browsers/packages
This adds google-chrome-stable (with an extra apt-source) to AGGREGATED_PACKAGES_DESKTOP_COMMA.
But only if:

• ARCH=amd64 and
• APPGROUPS includes "browsers"

So it is not included for any arm64, ever, nor if APPGROUPS does not include "browsers".
All good.

Unfortunately, the armbian-desktop deb is then inconsistent:

• Resulting package name would be armbian-jammy-desktop-gnome
• package is Architecture: all
• Recommends: AGGREGATED_PACKAGES_DESKTOP_COMMA (only for the amd64+browsers case, that includes google-chrome-stable)

So it's actually impossible to conciliate desktop aggregation (release+arch+appgroups+config_base+...) with a "single package", arch-independent, "armbian-desktop" package that is only per-RELEASE + DESKTOP_ENVIROMENT.
It gets worse if we consider AGGREGATED_DESKTOP_POSTINST and AGGREGATED_DESKTOP_CREATE_DESKTOP_PACKAGE which are also included in that package.

Some possibilities:

• Make the package arch-specific (solves some cases, but not the config_base nor appgroups scenarios.)
• Twist aggregation so we produce some kind of appgroup/config_base-independent AGGREGATED_PACKAGES_DESKTOP_SANS_APPGROUPS_SANS_CONFIG_BASE_COMMA and use that in the package Recommends.

How to reproduce?

"Simple" way to reproduce:

• ./compile.sh 'BETA=yes' 'BOARD=uefi-arm64' 'BRANCH=current' 'BUILD_DESKTOP=yes' 'BUILD_MINIMAL=no' 'DESKTOP_APPGROUPS_SELECTED=browsers' 'DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENT=gnome' 'DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENT_CONFIG_NAME=config_base' 'RELEASE=jammy' ARTIFACT_IGNORE_CACHE=yes

• ./compile.sh 'BETA=yes' 'BOARD=uefi-x86' 'BRANCH=current' 'BUILD_DESKTOP=yes' 'BUILD_MINIMAL=no' 'DESKTOP_APPGROUPS_SELECTED=browsers' 'DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENT=gnome' 'DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENT_CONFIG_NAME=config_base' 'RELEASE=jammy' ARTIFACT_IGNORE_CACHE=yes

• ./compile.sh 'BETA=yes' 'BOARD=uefi-x86' 'BRANCH=current' 'BUILD_DESKTOP=yes' 'BUILD_MINIMAL=no' 'DESKTOP_APPGROUPS_SELECTED=none' 'DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENT=gnome' 'DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENT_CONFIG_NAME=config_base' 'RELEASE=jammy' ARTIFACT_IGNORE_CACHE=yes

Each of these 3 builds produces a different armbian-jammy-desktop-gnome.

Branch

main (main development branch)

On which host OS are you observing this problem?

Jammy

Relevant log URL

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[github-actions]

Jira ticket: AR-1796

[rpardini]

For completeness: rootfs-amd64-jammy-gnome-desktop (rootfs artifact) has exactly the same problem, since it does not include appgroups or config_base in the name (it does include ARCH, though).
But, since rootfs artifacts are not published to an apt repo, this is a non-problem; the rootfs versions will vary and will be found correctly in OCI, and life goes on.

armbian-bsp-desktop also has the same problem.

[igorpecovnik]

it's actually impossible to conciliate desktop aggregation

Yes.

"armbian-desktop-$DE-$ARCH" should be either with all groups or with no groups, so something that is fixed. Idea is that this package, when installed from minimal image, provides desktop.

Also regarding configs, if we don't use them, perhaps removing them?

[rpardini]

Yes, we could remove appgroups and configs, but still, ARCH differences would still occur...

I'm testing making this package ARCH-specific, since nothing practical would change (package name is the same), and would allow us to "get by" as long as the targets.yaml used for repo-publishing does not have different appgroups/configs across all targets.

[igorpecovnik]

AFAIK configs are always the same - at least for our internal needs. If someone else uses this, can't tell. Lets discuss this problem later on meeting.

[rpardini]

Yes. Configs are always the same. (config_base).

Unfortunately, the armbian-desktop package is also responsible for handling:

• debian/postinst config files, in AGGREGATED_DESKTOP_POSTINST (goes into the package postinst)
• armbian/create_desktop_package.sh in AGGREGATED_DESKTOP_CREATE_DESKTOP_PACKAGE (is eval()'ed!) during package creation

So if we have a "fixed"/common armbian-desktop package (same for all appgroups) we'd be in trouble, we'd miss at least those:

• config/desktop/focal/appgroups/editors/debian/postinst
• config/desktop/focal/appgroups/browsers/debian/postinst
• config/desktop/focal/appgroups/browsers/armbian/create_desktop_package.sh
• config/desktop/buster/appgroups/browsers/debian/postinst
• config/desktop/buster/appgroups/browsers/armbian/create_desktop_package.sh
• config/desktop/bullseye/appgroups/browsers/debian/postinst
• config/desktop/bullseye/appgroups/browsers/armbian/create_desktop_package.sh
• config/desktop/sid/appgroups/browsers/debian/postinst
• config/desktop/sid/appgroups/browsers/armbian/create_desktop_package.sh

So we'd need to move those to image creation or something.

Similarly, the desktop-bsp package also handles

• debian/armbian-bsp-desktop/postinst in AGGREGATED_DESKTOP_BSP_POSTINST (no occurences of this in appgroups, thankfully)
• debian/armbian-bsp-desktop/prepare.sh in AGGREGATED_DESKTOP_BSP_PREPARE (same, no occurences for appgroups)