Package: xfce4 Version: 4.18 Severity: important As discussed on #1076728, there is a de facto expectation that each "good" desktop environment will provide a polkit authentication agent that is suitable for it, similar to the expectation for o.fd.Notifications.
I've reported this as a bug in the xfce4 metapackage, but it might make sense to push it down into a "smaller", lower-level package like xfce4-session (I am not familiar with the details of XFCE's design). There are two main ways to get a polkit agent: 1. Integrate it directly into the desktop shell, as has been done by GNOME since 3.0 and various GNOME derivatives like Phosh. XFCE has not done this, that I know of. 2. Depend on a separate polkit agent UI program that is appropriate for the desktop environment, and arrange for it to be started during graphical session login, either via /etc/xdg/autostart or by explicitly starting it. XFCE does not have its own polkit agent (https://github.com/ncopa/xfce-polkit exists, but is unmaintained and has not been packaged in Debian) so it will have to borrow someone else's. One straightforward way to implement (2.) would be to add a dependency on a specific polkit agent implementation that fits well into XFCE, or an or-group (Depends: impl1|impl2|...) for more than one implementation, where each implementation has an /etc/xdg/autostart/*.desktop whose ShowIn and/or OnlyShowIn fields allow it to be run under XFCE. If the chosen implementation is desktop-specific, it would be best to contact its maintainers, let them know that XFCE is also relyiing on that implementation, and perhaps offer to co-maintain it. Note that merely adding a direct or indirect dependency on the polkit-1-auth-agent virtual package is *not* enough to resolve this bug: that virtual package is provided by some polkit agents that are either integrated into a different desktop environment (gnome-shell, etc.), or standalone programs that have an OnlyShowIn that excludes them from being used by XFCE (polkit-kde-agent-1, etc.). Installing one of those will not provide a working polkit authentication agent under XFCE. Historically, policykit-1-gnome has been treated as the polkit agent of last resort. However, it was originally intended to be GNOME-specific, and is a GNOME-2-era implementation which is no longer maintained (see #990271), so I don't think anything involving a dependency on policykit-1-gnome would be a good solution to this issue. If the XFCE downstream or upstream maintainers feel that policykit-1-gnome is the implementation they want to be using, then someone will need to fork it under a less misleading name and become the fork's new upstream maintainer. Borrowing a polkit agent from LXDE or MATE would probably be a better solution. I suspect that new installations of XFCE are currently pulling in the unmaintained policykit-1-gnome by default, possibly via a long and unintended dependency chain. Comparing with some other major distros: - Arch seems to install (their equivalent of) policykit-1-gnome by default, despite it being dead upstream, but offers xfce-polkit as an alternative; - Fedora ships xfce-polkit Please choose a suitable polkit agent and add it as a dependency, or at least as a Recommends. Thanks, smcv
