Re: [gdm-list] Branch update

[Oswald Buddenhagen <ossi kde org>]

On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 11:37:17AM -0400, William Jon McCann wrote:
> We've split the daemon completely from all the user interfaces.  The
> greeter will have a well defined interface (using D-Bus) to
> communicate with the daemon.  The idea is to have different greeters
> for different scenarios (different distros / desktops).
> 
> We can conditionally build different greeters in the same tree.
>
that was all pretty clear to me already. ;)

> The daemon will determine which greeter to run using .desktop files
> and TryExec.
>
that's an interesting concept, actually. now we can fight about the
priorization if multiple frontends are found. :)
note that this cannot be configured, as configuration is only possible
through the frontend ... unless we make an additional "bootstrap" config
file.
note that a general backend/frontend config split is pretty much
impossible - the borders are just too fluent. also, you don't really
*want* two config systems to configure one application (like, say,
xdm-config for the backend and Xres for the greeter ;).

> At some point we might want to support out-of-tree greeters but we'd
> need to be sure we have a stable API first.
> 
i planned this with the xdm backend ever since i work on kdm. believe
me, it is outright unrealistic.

> If we don't decide to use the same backend daemon code then at least
> we should try to standardize the external D-Bus interfaces.
>
yeah. so far i was just too lazy to draft up something. :}
with ConsoleKit and soon hopefully PolicyKit much of my earlier design
ideas became sort of obsolete anyway.
i'll have to review what you came up with so far. expect a *lot* of
criticism (i'm (in)famous for that :=).

> However, we may find that in making changes to support D-Bus in that
> way we may as well share a daemon too - and make a lot less work for
> ourselves.  :)
> 
hehe.

> > two things should be clear to you:
> > - i accept no regressions from current kdm
> > - the bulk of the work would be with you, at least for now
> 
> I accept those conditions. 
>
if you only knew what you just bought into. :=)
obviously, some study of kdm code would be appropriate to find some of
the more subtle requirements.
one thing you should know is that i thoroughly despise hacks (some call
them pragmatic solutions). i.e., if a generic solution is at all
possible, it should be implemented, otherwise it counts as a regression.
:-P

> Unless there are serious objections, I'll go ahead and create a new
> freedesktop.org project for DisplayManager.
>
go ahead, it won't hurt (me :).

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