[arch-dev-public] An introduction to gooeydo

[Phil Dillon-Thiselton]

On 27/07/07, Damir Perisa <damir.perisa at solnet.ch> wrote:
> Friday 27 July 2007, Phil Dillon-Thiselton wrote:
>  | We think gooeydo nicely addresses the problem by ensure that a
>  | suitable "run as root" apps is used in all cases.
>
> hmm... i think the .desktop files should have a flag  that is handeled
> by the gui. it was suggested here first:
>
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2005-August/thread.html#5651
>
> but i don't know what happened since then.

Well, it looks like they hit the same snag - how do you know which of
a multitude of run as root apps are available for that user?  Even if
there was a field in the .desktop file where you could add a run as
root app you can't guarantee that every user/system will have it.
That mean another layer of functionality outside the .desktop file
which falls outside the FDS remit, I think.

> gooeydo is a possibility... but it kind of feels like a work-around,
> no?
>
Well, it is a work around, but not really any more or less than sudo
itself.  It _feels_ hacky to me because it's just a bash script.
Having said that 'which' is just some hacky bash and I use that every
other day.

There's not really an alternative though is there?  Unlike ubuntu we
don't use sudo as standard, and we won't, but yet we need a way to
ensure that all our .desktop files work as expected for everyone
within all DEs with their own implementations of run as root privs.

At the very least I'd like to think it is nice, tidy, comprehensive
workaround :-D

Phil