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Revision as of 15:55, 24 November 2010 by Nsoranzo (talk | contribs) (→‎Detailed Description: Add Thunar)


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

  • email: bnocera@redhat.com

Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora 40
  • Last updated: 2010-03-23
  • Percentage of completion: 80%


Detailed Description

Packages in the desktop spin:

Package name Status Bug reports or discussions
cheese done
epiphany done Removed obsolete gnome-vfs2-devel dependency
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 Applications should be removing their use of gnome-vfs2 and use gvfs instead. Direct gnome-vfs2 rdeps:

dasher (DONE upstream)
dia (DONE upstream, upstream bug)
glade3-libgladeui
gnome-python2-applet
gnome-python2-gnome
gnome-python2-gnomevfs
gnome-python2-libegg
im-chooser
inkscape (fedora bug 653516)
libgnome (which is required by dia, glade3-libgladeui, gnome-python2-applet, gnome-python2-bonobo, gnome-python2-libegg, gnome-python2-gnome, gnote, libbonoboui, mousetweaks, planner)
libgnomeui (which is required by gnome-applets)
planner (DONE upstream)
thunderbird
xulrunner

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 subpackage requires hal-info
pm-utils done fedora bug 636382
rhythmbox done upstream bug 604186 fedora bug
shotwell done
system-setup-keyboard done Used for keymap selection
xine-lib done dependency on gnome-vfs2 removed
xorg-x11-server-Xorg done

Other packages outside the desktop spin:

Package name Status Bug reports or discussions
beldi TODO
blueman TODO fedora bug 561019
exaile TODO upstream bug
gimp TODO upstream bug
gnome-commander TODO Requires gnome-vfs2-smb upstream bug
gnome-device-manager TODO
gparted done fedora bug 586377
hplip done? upstream bug
ifuse TODO
k3b done
kdebase-runtime done
kdelibs done
libconcord TODO
libvirt done
lxsession TODO upstream bug
matahari TODO
nut TODO
ovirt-server TODO ovirt-server-installer subpackage requires hal
pcsc-lite TODO Requires hal-libs
razertool TODO
smolt TODO fedora bug 634883
Thunar TODO Requires hal-libs and hal-storage-addon
xfce4-cddrive-plugin TODO
xfce4-power-manager TODO
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. If the last thing that depends on hal is gnome-power-manager for the backlight support, we can stop running hal as a service at boot and make it dbus-activated instead.

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