From Fedora Project Wiki


HAL Removal

Summary

HAL is a behemoth, do-it-all, daemon to access hardware. It is now obsoleted by udisks (né DeviceKit-disks) and upower (né DeviceKit-power), as well as libudev for device discovery.

This feature tracks the removal of HAL in the Fedora Desktop spin.

See also:

GNOME upstream tracker

Ubuntu tracker

Debian tracker

Note that gnome-vfs2 still relies on HAL, and is dragged in through libgnomeui. So removing the gnome-vfs2, or libgnomeui dependencies from applications also helps towards that goal.

Owner

Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora 40
  • Last updated: 2011-02-08
  • Percentage of completion: 85%


Detailed Description

To generate the list of packages still depending on hal in rawhide:

$ repoquery -q --repofrompath=fedora-rawhide,http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/x86_64/os/ --repoid=fedora-rawhide --whatrequires hal hal-info hal-libs hal-storage-addon | sort -u

Packages in the Desktop spin

Package name Status Bug reports or discussions
cheese done
evolution done
evolution-data-server done
gdm done upstream bug 572765, Fedora bug 567432
gnome-pilot TODO upstream bug 593936
gnome-power-manager done upstream bug 593933
gnome-vfs2 WONTFIX gnome-vfs2 is deprecated, applications should use gvfs instead. Packages depending directly on gnome-vfs2:

gnome-python2-applet
gnome-python2-gnome
gnome-python2-gnomevfs
gnome-python2-libegg
libgnome (which is required by gnome-python2-applet, gnome-python2-bonobo, gnome-python2-libegg, gnome-python2-gnome, gnote, libbonoboui, planner)
libgnomeui (which is required by gnome-applets)
planner (DONE upstream)
xulrunner (upstream bug 494163)

Since a lot of other packages depend on gnome-vfs2, it may be useful to disable its HAL support, as was recently done by Debian, see Debian bug 599020

gstreamer-plugins-good done
gvfs done upstream bug 586410
gvfs-obexftp done upstream bug 586411 and upstream bug 511671
libfprint done Still requires hal-filesystem
libgpod done
libmtp done libmtp-hal leaf subpackage requires hal-info
pm-utils done Fedora bug 636382
rhythmbox done upstream bug 604186, Fedora bug 597202
shotwell done
smolt done Fedora bug 634883
system-setup-keyboard done
xorg-x11-server-Xorg done

Other packages in the DVD

Package name Status Bug reports or discussions
blueman TODO Fedora bug 561019
dasher TODO Requires gnome-vfs2, upstream bug 572134, Fedora bug 675740
dia TODO Requires gnome-vfs2, upstream bug 613133
gimp TODO upstream bug 592364
glade3-libgladeui TODO Requires gnome-vfs2
hplip done? upstream bug 401091
inkscape TODO Requires gnome-vfs2, upstream bug 715215, Fedora bug 653516
k3b done
kdebase-runtime done
kdelibs done
libvirt done
pcsc-lite TODO Requires hal-libs, Debian bug 587979
thunderbird TODO Requires gnome-vfs2
xine-lib done

Other packages outside the DVD

Package name Status Bug reports or discussions
beldi TODO
camcardsync TODO
eclipse done upstream bug 333759, Fedora bug 667998
epiphany done
exaile TODO upstream bug 625209
exo done
gnomad2 TODO
gnome-commander TODO Requires gnome-vfs2-smb, upstream bug 589069
gnome-device-manager TODO
gparted done Fedora bug 586377
gxine TODO
halevt TODO
ifuse done
libconcord TODO
librapi TODO Both librapi and python-rapi subpackages
libsynce TODO
lxsession TODO upstream bug
matahari TODO
nut TODO
odccm TODO
ohm TODO
ovirt-server TODO ovirt-server-installer subpackage requires hal
oxine TODO
pcmanfm TODO Requires hal-storage-addon
pmount TODO
razertool TODO
synce-hal TODO
synce-trayicon TODO
Thunar done
thunar-volman done
thunar-vfs TODO
xfburn TODO
xfce4-cddrive-plugin TODO
xfce4-power-manager done
xfce4-volstatus-icon TODO

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

  • Still ship HAL.

Documentation

N/A

Release Notes

  • Fedora now does not ship with the HAL daemon, and libhal by default. If a specific application require libhal to function, please file a bug against it to be ported to the new technology.

Comments and Discussion