Debian Testing / Sid (bookworm) Support

[jckso]

• [x] I've run a search on the existing enhancements to make sure I'm not filing a duplicate (you can use the search box at the top left corner)
• [X] I've read the Regolith documentation and didn't find any relevant topic
• [X] I tried asking on Slack (especially for configuration related issues)

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Although Debian Stable is great for certain use cases, many need to use Testing / Sid due to hardware incompatibilities, or many just want newer packages that aren't available in backports.

Describe the solution you'd like Regolith's builds should target Debian bookworm. A separate repo specifically for bookworm is probably needed. When installing the release for bullseye onto bookworm, certain things do not work, such as terminal themes and hotkeys for apps. I believe this is due to the bullseye packages being installed onto bookworm, but more testing is probably needed.

Additional context Debian Testing ISO There are no unstable images for Sid, but you can follow the instructions here

[kgilmer]

The builder is failing in an odd way (it builds the first package in the manifest and then silently exits from building remaining packages). It's not clear to me why this is happening, but my guess is that an error within the build for a package is causing the loop to exit prematurely. I see errors from dch saying that it does not recognize bookworm as a distribution. It seems to be wanting a user confirmation from the console. This seems like it might be impacting the loop but unsure.

Need to know how debian expects "testing" packages to be represented in a repo. Did some googling but as usual there are so many false positives I quickly gave up looking for an answer. If anyone can unlock the mystery of dch + debian testing I can continue this work.

[jckso]

I think I might have found the answer to your first problem. In the sourcecode for debchange, it checks the distro name given if (defined $opt_D) { if ($vendor eq 'Debian') { unless ($opt_D =~ /^(experimental|unstable|sid|UNRELEASED|((old){0,2}stable|testing|wheezy|jessie|stretch|buster|bullseye)(-proposed-updates|-security)?|proposed-updates)$/ ) { my $deb_info = get_debian_distro_info(); my ($oldstable_backports, $stable_backports) = ("", ""); if ($deb_info == 0) { warn

Try running dch with testing as the distribution instead of bookworm

[gazsp]

Is there any update on this? I'm on bookworm and installing the bullseye package doesn't fully work (as described in the parent comment).

[kgilmer]

I'm looking for testers. To test from testing/bookworm, follow the installation directions on regolith-desktop.com, but use this URL for apt:

https://regolith-desktop.org/unstable-debian-testing-amd64

[jckso]

Just installed in a VM. Everything seems to be working great! I think settings not respecting theme is already a bug in other distros too. Will install on main computer later!

[jckso]

To test from testing/bookworm, follow the installation directions on regolith-desktop.com, but use this URL for apt:

Also change bullseye to testing echo deb "[arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/regolith-archive-keyring.gpg] \ https://regolith-desktop.org/unstable-debian-testing-amd64 testing main" | \ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/regolith.list

[kgilmer]

There is an issue with regolith-control-center:

$ sudo apt install i3xrocks-time 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 regolith-control-center : Depends: language-selector-gnome (>= 0.179~) but it is not installable
                           Depends: whoopsie-preferences but it is not installable
                           Recommends: libcanberra-pulse but it is not going to be installed
                           Recommends: power-profiles-daemon but it is not installable
                           Recommends: gnome-control-center-faces but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

[kgilmer]

An update has been pushed for regolith-control-center. @jckso are you able to test that it works for you?

[jckso]

@kgilmer Works for me!

[giomf]

So I installed it now on barematel (Debian sid) and so far everything works. I'll test it for a few days and report back.

Thanks for the feature!

[MHellmund]

Many thanks for providing Regoltih2 packages for Debian sid!

I didn't see the rofication notification counter in the i3xrocks bar. Reason: wrong netcat. I had to install netcat-openbsd (and not netcat-traditional) since only this version supports the 'nc -U' option used in /usr/share/i3xrocks/scripts/rofication.

[kgilmer]

Thanks for the reminder (I had this issue to but forgot to apply the fix to the package)

[kgilmer]

I have been running bookworm for at least 3 weeks now without any problems. Will promote the build target to testing.

[jckso]

Is there anything different to do to support Sid, or is that included in testing? I know that some people have said Sid is already working.

[giomf]

I now have the first problems on sid. After an update the packets i3xrocks-updates i3xrocks-time disappeared. I must admit I was not fully present in the update process and blindly accepted everything...

When I try to install the packages the following error message appears.

3xrocks-time: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libgnome-desktop-3-19 : Depends: gnome-desktop3-data (< 43~) but 43~alpha-3 is to be installed

and for i3xrocks-updates: The following packages have unmet dependencies: i3xrocks-updates : Depends: update-notifier-common but it is not installable

Additionally, I noticed that the regolith-settings are no longer installed. ~~However, I don't know the name of the package or can't find it to install it.~~

Edit: when trying to install regolith-control-center the following error appears: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libgnome-desktop-3-19 : Depends: gnome-desktop3-data (< 43~) but 43~alpha-3 is to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Edit: As already mentioned by @jckso , it is not quite clear whether regolith will support sid with these changes or whether it will be limited to testing.

[kgilmer]

I am noticing this as well @Giom-fm . I am guessing some things got updated. I have yet to do the dist-upgrade so have held (but working) packages. I'll take a look when I get some time. Regarding sid vs testing, it's unclear to me what the difference is, as it relates to Regolith. All that is done in Regolith is to have a Debian version called "testing". Can someone clarify?

[giomf]

All right thanks for your efforts @kgilmer

About the testing/unstable. I am unsure which distribution version of Debian the regolith test target is now tracking. Is this just a target to test the development of regolith or should the target run "stable" on debian sid.

[kgilmer]

I just read https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable and from that believe that we'll only have time (at most) to support testing. As I understand it Debian Sid represents unstable and given the expected amount of volatility there would not want to spend time dealing w/ triaging upstream issues. So, the existing setup in Regolith I believe will carry forward: support both bullseye and testing, but the later will never make it to a Regolith release stage due to obvious reasons.

[kgilmer]

I cannot get unmodified gnome-control-center to build in bookworm at this time due to outdated dependencies. Will look back in a week or so to see if everything has stabilized enough to build from source. I may also look into making regolith-control-center a soft dependency.

[giomf]

I just read https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable and from that believe that we'll only have time (at most) to support testing. As I understand it Debian Sid represents unstable and given the expected amount of volatility there would not want to spend time dealing w/ triaging upstream issues. So, the existing setup in Regolith I believe will carry forward: support both bullseye and testing, but the later will never make it to a Regolith release stage due to obvious reasons.

Yes, I can understand that. Fortunately, testing and sid are closely related, so hopefully there will be few complications.

I cannot get unmodified gnome-control-center to build in bookworm at this time due to outdated dependencies. Will look back in a week or so to see if everything has stabilized enough to build from source. I may also look into making regolith-control-center a soft dependency.

Ok thanks!

[giomf]

I think you could give it a try. They have updated every gnome stuff to gnome 43.

Edit: I really like this project. Can i help in any way?

[kgilmer]

Progress:

[giomf]

Great! I just updated it and it fixed my mentioned issues.

[cosgroveb]

Still looking for testers? Your bookworm apt repo URLs appear to 403.

[mpareja]

@cosgroveb It just worked for me with the caveat that I installed Debian with Gnome Flashback installed - unsure if that matters. I used the following on this newly minted Debian machine:

$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/regolith.list
deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/regolith-archive-keyring.gpg] https://regolith-desktop.org/unstable-debian-testing-amd64 testing main

[mpareja]

• [ ] unable to install regolith-look-solarized-dark

$ sudo apt install regolith-look-solarized-dark
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 solarc-theme : Depends: gnome-themes-standard but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

[kgilmer]

Hmm, this is working for me @mpareja . Perhaps I have more apt repos?

~$ apt-cache policy | grep http | awk '{print $2" "$3}' | sort -u
http://deb.debian.org/debian testing/contrib
http://deb.debian.org/debian testing/main
http://deb.debian.org/debian testing/non-free
http://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable/main
https://packagecloud.io/slacktechnologies/slack/debian jessie/main
https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable/main
https://regolith-desktop.org/testing-debian-testing-amd64 testing/main
https://repo.steampowered.com/steam stable/steam
o=https://regolith-desktop.org/testing-debian-testing-amd64,n=testing,l=https://regolith-desktop.org/testing-debian-testing-amd64,c=main,b=amd64 
~$ apt list | grep gnome-themes-standard

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

gnome-themes-standard/now 3.28-1 all [installed,local]

@cosgroveb :

Still looking for testers? Your bookworm apt repo URLs appear to 403.

Yeah that apt repos have no html content, but the unstable stage does have support for debian testing. I'm running it at home as my primary dev environment FWIW.

[kgilmer]

Hi @mpareja , somehow I have that package on bookworm. It's in these, if you care to install that look: https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=gnome-themes-standard

[mpareja]

I have a couple of subtle but possibly impactful differences. My apt sources point at bookworm rather than testing - I must have installed debian a tad differently.

Also, I've been using unstable rather than testing for my regolith installation. is it worth switching?

Can you run an apt show gnome-themes-standard | grep 'APT-Sources' to see which repository the package is coming from?

Aside from this, I've found it very stable; albeit, I've only run it for a handful of days - but it's been full-time.

[BillyMorgan]

Hey guys, I did a dumb thing yesterday and installed on top of Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic) before realising I was having the same issue mentioned above and then realising that 22.10 isn't officially supported. I only noticed something wasn't right because my clock wasn't showing in the bar. Then I saw this:

$ sudo apt install i3xrocks-time
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 regolith-control-center : Depends: libgnome-desktop-3-19 (>= 3.33.4) but it is not installable
                           Recommends: pulseaudio-module-bluetooth but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Is there anything I can do / help test? I really don't wanna have to re-install.. WAY too lazy :)