[gentoo-desktop] Re: hal & KDE

[Duncan]

Nikos Chantziaras posted on Sun, 16 May 2010 10:52:33 +0300 as excerpted:

> On 05/16/2010 10:42 AM, Leonid Podolny wrote:
>> Hi,
>> While merging x11-base/xorg-server-1.8.1 I encountered the following
>> warning:
>>
>> Usage of hal is strongly discouraged. Please migrate to udev.
>>  From next major release on the hal support will be fully disabled.
>> Both hal and udev flags are enabled.
>> Enabling only udev!
>>
>> I guess that the message above speaks only about the HAL dependency of
>> the Xorg itself, i.e. it doesn't mean that general usage of HAL at the
>> system is discouraged/deprecated. Obviously, KDE depends pretty heavily
>> on HAL.
>> Is it correct?
>
> Correct.  This refers only to X itself.  Everything else is still free
> to use HAL.  To avoid the warning, simply disable the "hal" USE flag for
> x11-base/xorg-server only.

Absolutely correct with current kde (4.4.x).  Over the medium term, it too 
will likely be dropping hal, in favor of udev and various other helpers, 
as hal itself is deprecated and not getting new development, only minimal 
support of current features until there has been some time to switch away 
from it.

Hal is now considered a dead-end, a hotplugging experiment that was a good 
first start and from which the various developers and users learned a lot, 
but which was proven far too complex and hard to maintain over the longer 
term.

And, based on the hal vs new hotplugging config in xorg, I must say I 
agree.  I had occasion to have to edit hal's XML based *.fdi files by 
hand, and while it was possible for me as a tech-head Gentoo user to get 
my head around enough to get working, the experience wasn't pleasant by a 
long shot.  The new xorg config, back in traditional xorg format, is 
**FAR** easier, the more so because my Logitech keyboard with its extra 
keys was detected without me even having to do anything at all, not even 
setting the model number as I did pre-hal to get them working properly.

udev config files as well, are **WAY** easier to modify by hand when 
necessary, than hal's XML/FDI files, and I expect that will continue to be 
the case with pretty much the whole hal replacement, as one of the reasons 
they decided hal didn't work was because asking end users to edit XML 
files and get it right was just considered too much, and what with all the 
new products constantly coming out, it was found to be simply unrealistic 
to try to have the distributions keep up with it themselves.

So I'm definitely looking forward to the day hal isn't needed for any of 
that automation, any longer, as I too expect it to be a far better and 
simpler situation than hal ever was, or ever could be.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman