Re: [gdm-list] Basic overview of internals

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Jon:

> I've thrown together a (very) brief description of some of the daemon internals.
>
> http://svn.gnome.org/viewcvs/gdm2/branches/mccann-gobject/daemon/INTERNALS?view=markup
>
> Still a lot to add but it is a start...

Thanks.  I just looked over it, and it is a good start.  Basically you describe
the function of all the clases, which is very helpful.  Some ideas of what
information would be useful to add still:

I think the documentation should also include some maintenance/task-based
information.  Here are some examples:

- One of the most common on-going modifications to the code is to add
  a configuration value, then cause that configuration value to get passed to
  the right area of the code so it actually affects behavior.
- How notifications and messages are handled so that any running slaves/greeters
  get notified to handle the change.
- If you need to create a new message type between the daemon/slave,
  daemon/greeter, slave/greeter, how to go about doing this.

Looking at the code it seems that all places where gdm_daemon_config_get*
calls have been commented out, and a few references to gdm_settings*
functions.  It seems that the way you do configuration changes is quite
different, and not documented in any of the gdm-settings.h header files.
In the old gdm, there were detailed instructions in daemon/gdm-config-entries.h
describing this.  This header has been removed, though.

In the previous email you listed these as the TODO items:

---

* Nail down the relationship/interaction between ConsoleKit/HAL/GDM.
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/hal/2007-August/009395.html

* Port gnome-panel and fast-user-switch applet to new interfaces (and
in some cases create new interfaces) - while not strictly GDM we need
to do this in order to understand what we should provide.

* Add session migration code back in.

* Add back the XDMCP chooser stuff.

* Add back something for gdmflexiserver...

* Make sure that our XAuth stuff is correct after all the changes (not
confident it is)

* Test all the error handling code.  For example: make sure we always
detect a dead session.

---

But you didn't mention anything about configuration needing to be plugged
back in?  Should this be added to the TODO list?

Also the TODO file in the gdm-gobject branch is empty.  Since we
are building a TODO list, lets put it in CVS.  Might also be good to review
the oldo TODO list and include anything that we're probably not going to
fix in this rewrite.  I just reviewed it, and don't see anything worth
keeping, but would be useful if you could verify.

Brian