Re: [gnome-settings-daemon] datetime: Remove datetime D-Bus mechanism

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Fri, 2012-01-20 at 08:47 -0500, Ryan Lortie wrote:
> hi Bastien,
> 
> On Fri, 2012-01-20 at 12:36 +0000, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > No, the distributions/systems that choose not to use systemd will have
> > to provide a compatible D-Bus service.
> 
> This is what I guessed you'd say.

Why did you ask then? :)

> > It can be something "extracted" from systemd, or something new and
> > revived from the old date and time mechanism, but it won't be something
> > we support and maintain in gnome-settings-daemon.
> 
> > And I'm glad I have 3000 less lines code to maintain.
> 
> I'm just a little bit concerned about how this looks.  I love when we
> can delete code, but we're doing it by disabling a previously-working
> feature for a portion of our users.
> 
> If we introduced new optional features that depended on a particular
> systemd functionality in order to operate, it would be one thing.  We do
> that often.  This change is a regression of existing functionality in
> the name of "I don't feel like maintaining it anymore".

No, it's a different API, so I would have needed to rewrite the code to
support the new API anyway. And I would have needed to rewrite most of
it to use GDBus instead of dbus-glib.

> I'd also feel a bit better if I thought you had made efforts to get in
> touch with those that would be affected by this regression.  Ubuntu
> isn't shipping GNOME 3.4 g-s-d/g-c-c, this cycle, for example, but for
> the last week I've been trying to convince them that they should.  If I
> had succeeded (which I am now glad I didn't) then this change would have
> been a royal pain, creating a whole lot of new work to fit into an
> already full schedule.

What about the schedule of the gnome-control-center maintainers? I have
other things to work on too.

This particular change was mentioned nearly a year ago on this very same
list. It's not my fault Ubuntu (in this particular case) didn't take the
hint to start packaging the relevant D-Bus services, or rewriting them
to fit their use.

> Many of our own end-users will still want to install GNOME 3.4 onto
> their Ubuntu systems (myself included).  I look forward to the mention
> in our release notes about how they can no longer change their time
> because we wanted to delete a bit of code.

You're making a fuss because you ("Ubuntu") didn't plan ahead. No, I
didn't do this to piss off Ubuntu or Canonical, because I have better
things to do, like writing GNOME code.

Stop this us vs. them thing, and get them to package up the missing
bits. An afternoon's work, and no need to scream bloody murder.

/Bastien, getting frankly annoyed