Hi,
On Thu, 2007-04-12 at 23:00 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
On Thu, 2007-04-12 at 20:50 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 06:11:12PM -0400, Kelly wrote:
> > 1) Is there sufficient interest in having the system-config packages
> > split into data and GUI components so there might be Qt/KDE versions in
> > the future?
>
> I don't know about "sufficient", but there's interest in doing
that for
> privilege-separation reasons. Being able to use alternate front-ends comes
> for free.
Exactly. And moving the back-ends to somewhere central (e.g. fd.o) and
adding the front-ends to the actual desktop projects (e.g. GNOME, KDE)
is what we really want. That way we get all the distros/OS's to rally
around the same code base and the user experience as a whole becomes
better and more integrated.
This partly relies on all distros actually wanting to use the same
codebase ;-P, I don't take that as a given. Has some potential for NIH
syndrome.
That's already been happening with all the
HAL/NetworkManager/GNOME's
Project Utopia/KDE's Solid stuff and we're only going to do more of this
in the future; not less. With some of the PolicyKit stuff I talked
about
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-March/msg01211.html
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-March/msg01212.html
it will be, for example, a patch around 100-200 lines to GNOME's clock
applet to provide the same functionality we today have in
I take it that you mean 100-200 lines of glue code in addition to the
(not yet) separate frontend and backend that communicate via dbus?
Because frankly I'd be seriously amazed if the functionality in s-c-date
could be replicated with so few code.
system-config-date. And it won't have to run as root; we can
configure
it such that laptop users don't have to auth, admins can lock it down,
yadayada etc. etc. etc.
(The good thing, also, is that most of the hard work on PolicyKit is
already done [1]; I plan to land it early in the Fedora 8 cycle and then
go on a spree to integrate it with GNOME where applicable.)
So, in other words, I guess I'm saying that at least my point of view is
that much system-config-* is a dead-end for all but really Fedora
centric stuff that don't apply to other distros/OS'es. So my advice to
people asking if it's a good idea to write Qt front-ends would be to
start helping out on integrating these features in the respective
desktop environments.
Having UI and logic better separated would actually make it easier to
bring back meaningful text/command line apps which is a good thing.
Of course, this task is a lot harder than doing s/GTK+/Qt/ to some
source code; it actually requires that you come up with an architecture
and design that can work on all distros and don't do silly things like
running X11 apps as root. But I think in the end, it's a lot more
rewarding doing this than just Qt-ifying code; I think it also helps
create a better user experience.
Nils
--
Nils Philippsen / Red Hat / nphilipp(a)redhat.com
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- B. Franklin, 1759
PGP fingerprint: C4A8 9474 5C4C ADE3 2B8F 656D 47D8 9B65 6951 3011