gnome/xubuntu package duplication issue

[Jani Monoses]

Hello all,

for Xubuntu I have selected a number of packages for the default install
which are Gnome apps but with a few tweaks can be made to have GTK-only
dependencies. Some of them already have --disable-gnome configure 
options in upstream. The packages are : evince, gcalctool, gnumeric, 
gnome-system-tools and gnome-cups-manager.

While they can be built from a separate source package (see evince-gtk 
and xubuntu-system-tools in universe) this is not optimal as it 
conflicts with the goal of reducing duplication in main.

The problem could be solved by building gnome and gtk binaries from said
packages, but most of them use CDBS which does not support multiple 
build passes required for such a scenario. Having these packages changed 
to use plain debhelper means extra burden for the maintainers.

So these are the possibilities I see

1) switch to debhelper
2) use separate source packages
3) do not provide these packages in xubuntu default
4) make dapper's CDBS support the minimal required multibuild features 
which are required for gnome.mk to run two passes of configure/make
5) some other package build tricks, like this:

11:55	Kamion	janimo: any reason you couldn't do cdbs multibuild by 
creating two extra debian/rules-* files which are basically ordinary 
debian/rules files except that they use a different build directory, and 
a very simple debian/rules file which just calls both subrules files in 
succession?
11:55	Kamion	wouldn't be very pretty, but ought to be relatively easy 
for cdbs-ish people to maintain

but 1,2,3 are not really desirable by most people

so I'd like to ask the people involved to state which they prefer and 
which they absolutely veto.

I realize that unfortunately for Ubuntu/Gnome this is not really a 
trade-off since either way there is some extra maintenance cost so these 
features can get into Xubuntu, but I am willing to help keeping this 
cost low, hoping that for Ubuntu as a family of distros the overall
gain is positive.

thanks
Jani

PS: This was brought up in today's TB meeting too, for details see link 
below starting at 10:39. Adjust the link if the meeting was not held 
today ;)

http://people.ubuntu.com/~fabbione/irclogs/ubuntu-meeting-current.html