Cinnamon for Debian – imminent possible removal from testing
Update 2020-09-30: The post has created considerable movement, and a PR request by Fedora developers to rebase cjs onto more current gjs and libmozjs78 is being tested. I have uploaded packages of cinnamon and cjs to experimental based on these patches (400 files, about 50000 lines of code touched, not what I normally like to have in a debian patch) and would appreciate testing and feedback.
I have been more or less maintaining Cinnamon now for quite some time, but using it only sporadically due to my switch to KDE/Plasma. Currently, Cinnamon’s cjs package depends on mozjs52, which also is probably going to be orphaned soon. This will precipitate a lot of changes, not the least being Cinnamon being removed from Debian/testing.
I have pinged upstream several times, without much success. So for now the future looks bleak for cinnamon in Debian. If there are interested developers (Debian or not), please get in touch with me, or directly try to update cjs to mozjs78.
Just abandon it. Thanks for previous work though.
you may try to use “gjs”
as mentioned in https://github.com/linuxmint/cjs/issues/80#issuecomment-699863538
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/cinnamon/commits/master
Yes, cjs, was always based on gjs, the question is keeping up with updates. I have already prepared a package for Debian/experimental that uses the hammer-approach patch from the mentioned PR, plus the other necessary fixes. A bit testing would be appreciated (packages cinnamon and cjs).
should i install “debian testing” to test your patches . What tasks you need me to cover to do the testing.
No, you need to be running Debian/sid (unstable), add the sources for Debian/experimental, and manually upgrade. Don’t do it if you have never done it, would be too dangerous to mess up your system.
is it leaving debian, or the better not ?
It is staying, one way or the other. We are discussing and testing possible alternatives at the moment (switch to gjs, update cjs).
Debian Cinnamon is a wonderful desktop. It’s sad to see you move on, but I thank you for your development and maintenance over the years. If there’s anything I can do to help maintain this solid desktop, I would be more than happy to help. I have very limited experience with Python & C programming languages, but I could help report bugs or anything else to lighten the load in this transition period. Once again, thank you for your dedication. Hopefully I can help in some small way.