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Revision as of 14:05, 18 March 2011 by Nsoranzo (talk | contribs) (→‎Other packages outside the DVD: ohm is dead upstream and gnome-device-manager probably too)


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.

HAL package maintainer is planning to retire it for Fedora 16.

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

See also:

GNOME upstream tracker

Ubuntu tracker

Debian tracker

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 --repofrompath=fedora-rawhide-i386,http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/i386/os/ --repoid=fedora-rawhide-i386 --qf '%{NAME}' --whatrequires hal hal-info hal-libs hal-storage-addon | sort -u

Packages in the Desktop spin

Package name Status Bug reports or discussions
abrt-gui done Fedora bug 652423
cheese done
evolution done
evolution-data-server done
gdm done upstream bug 572765, Fedora bug 567432
gnome-power-manager done upstream bug 593933
gnome-vfs2 TODO gnome-vfs2 has been deprecated since 2008, applications should use gvfs instead. Packages depending directly on gnome-vfs2:

gnome-python2-gnome
gnome-python2-gnomevfs
libgnome (required by gnome-python2-bonobo, libbonoboui)
libgnomeui (required by gnome-python2-gnome)

gnome-python is also deprecated for GNOME3, applications should use PyGObject.
libbonoboui, libgnome, libgnomeui are also deprecated for GNOME3.
Since >100 other packages depend on gnome-vfs2, it may be useful to disable its HAL support, as was recently done by Debian (Debian bug 599020), but the goal is to get rid of gnome-vfs2 too.

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
orca TODO Requires gnome-python2-gnome and gnome-python2-bonobo, upstream bug 626254
pm-utils done Fedora bug 636382
rhythmbox done upstream bug 604186, Fedora bug 597202
setroubleshoot done Fedora bug 678543
shotwell done
smolt done Fedora bug 634883
system-setup-keyboard done
xorg-x11-server-Xorg done
xulrunner TODO Requires gnome-vfs2, upstream bug 494163

Other packages in the DVD

Package name Status Bug reports or discussions
amarok done Appears to work fine without libmtp-hal on F15/F16. (libmtp-hal is needed on F14 for some reason.)
blueman done 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 done Requires gnome-vfs2
gnome-pilot TODO done in upstream git, upstream bug 593936
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
lxsession TODO upstream bug
pcsc-lite done Requires hal-libs, Debian bug 587979, done in upstream 1.7.0
planner TODO Requires gnome-vfs2, done in upstream git, and libgnome
thunderbird done 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 Fedora bug 677323
gnome-commander TODO Requires gnome-vfs2-smb, upstream bug 589069
gnome-device-manager TODO Probably dead upstream
gparted done Fedora bug 586377
gxine done
halevt TODO
ifuse done
libconcord TODO
librapi TODO Both librapi and python-rapi subpackages
libsynce TODO
matahari TODO Fedora bug 677367
nut TODO HAL support is optional
odccm TODO
ohm TODO Dead upstream
olpc-kbdshim 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 upstream bug 5965
xfce4-cddrive-plugin TODO
xfce4-power-manager done
xfce4-volstatus-icon done Orphaned since Fedora 15

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