HAL Removal
Summary
HAL is a behemoth, do-it-all, daemon to access hardware. It is now obsoleted by 
udisks
See also:
Owner
- Name: Nicola Soranzo
- Email: nsoranzo at fedoraproject.org
- Original Feature author: Bastien Nocera
- Email: bnocera@redhat.com
Current status
- Targeted release: Fedora 16
- Last updated: 2011-09-27
- Percentage of completion: 100%
This feature originally proposed the removal of HAL from the Fedora Desktop spin. This goal has already been accomplished and we also completed the removal from the Fedora DVD. In the meantime,
Detailed Description
To generate the list of packages still depending on hal in rawhide:
$ repoquery --repofrompath=fedora-16-i386,http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/16/i386/os/ --repoid=fedora-16-i386 --qf '%{NAME}' --whatrequires hal hal-devel hal-info hal-libs hal-storage-addon | sort -u
General tasks
| Task | Status | Bug reports or discussions |
|---|---|---|
Block |
done | |
Block |
done | |
| Remove references to hal in kickstart files | done |
Packages in the Desktop spin
| Package name | Status | Bug reports or discussions |
|---|---|---|
|
done | abrt-gui subpackage requires gnome-python2-gnomevfs |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | GnomeVFS has been deprecated since 2008, applications should use gnome-vfs2, its HAL support was disabled ( |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | hal-filesystem |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | hal-libsgnome-vfs2 |
|
done | gnome-python2-gnome |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | gnome-vfs2 |
Other packages in the DVD
| Package name | Status | Bug reports or discussions |
|---|---|---|
|
done | Works fine without libmtp-hal on F15/F16 (which is needed on F14 for some reason)
|
|
done | |
|
done | gnome-vfs2 |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | glade3-libgladeui subpackage requires gnome-vfs2 |
|
done | |
|
done | upstream bug 401091 |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done | hal-libs |
|
done | |
|
done | |
|
done |
Other packages outside the DVD
Benefit to Fedora
Faster boot-up, and removal of obsoleted technology.
Scope
Loads of applications require HAL itself, or libhal. Applications should not rely on HAL, or libhal being available.
How To Test
Need to test:
yum remove hal-filesystem hal-libs- Check that nothing gets removed because it depends on hal
- Check that applications that access hardware still work as before
User Experience
- Faster boot-up
- Possibly faster applications startup when switching from libhal to libgudev for device enumeration
Dependencies
- See description
Contingency Plan
- Undeprecate hal.
Documentation
N/A
Release Notes
HAL, a hardware abstraction layer which has been a deprecated component for several releases, has been completely removed from Fedora. Software components using HAL have moved over to using udisks and upower as well as libudev for device discovery. This results in faster system bootup and faster startup for applications depending on device discovery.