[arch-general] future of xorg-server and hal

[Xavier]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 4:40 PM,  <hollunder at gmx.at> wrote:
>>
>> Anyway hal is dead :
>> http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2009/Notes?highlight=%28hal%29|%28udev%29#head-75cccc4e4968dd043dcf2166dff61afd7d0d06c5
>> But since that functionality is definitely needed, it will have to be
>> replaced.. somehow.
>
>
> Isn't that somehow going to be device-kit?
> If so, we won't get rid of dbus.
>

It looks like devicekit has -disk and -power but not -input. And what
Xorg would need is the non-existing -input, so it cannot use
devicekit.

Besides it looks like some xorg devels are a bit annoyed by the big
mess and endless renaming/overhaul of these projects :  hal ->
devicekit -power/-disk -> upower/udisk ?
http://paste.debian.net/52931
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/DeviceKit
You might also find more information on devicekit ML.

Anyway, as the xorg wiki above points out, and as Jan mentioned in
another thread, Xorg will probably just use libudev directly on Linux
: http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-general/2009-December/009283.html

And some further clarification :

18:41 < alanc> right now, Xorg uses HAL for two things:
1) an OS independent way of finding input devices and getting notified
of hotplugs,
2) configuration data for those devices
18:42 < jcristau>
1) is going to become os-dependent,
and 2) should eventually be possible through xorg.conf.d
18:42 < alanc> for task #1, HAL will be replaced by OS-dependent code
- libudev on Linux, libsysevent on Solaris, whatever HAL called on
BSD/other OS'es for those OS'es