kdereview exemption for PolicyKit-KDE

[Lubos Lunak]

On Monday 17 of November 2008, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Monday 17 November 2008, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > On Monday 17 November 2008, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> >
> > So PolicyKit-KDE is not a framework but developers working with the
> > lastest release would need it?
>
> it's a simple matter of connect-the-dots:
>
> * if there is no KDE GUI for PolicyKit, will people be more or less
> encouraged to use it where appropriate from their apps?
>
> * will we go out and encourage people to use PolicyKit in their apps in our
> blogs and what not until there is a KDE GUI so we don't appear to be second
> class citizens there?
>
> it's not a matter of "need" as much as "in all likliehood, far fewer KDE
> devs will work with it until there is a KDE GUI for it."

 I expect most KDE devs will stop caring about some GUI the moment they find 
out that PolicyKit has the usual C-style API that is a pain to use for 
somebody used to Qt and the docs are not very helpful either. I mean, just 
imagine you want to make kcmclock use PolicyKit and tell me how long you'll 
need to stare at http://hal.freedesktop.org/docs/PolicyKit/ to figure out 
what to do (if you manage at all). I eventually gave up with the docs and 
just more or less copied the policykit-grant CLI helper for the policykit-kde 
auth agent, and even after that, I still don't know how I'd write the 
kcmclock case.

 So if somebody wants to push PolicyKit usage in KDE, IMHO they'd better start 
with some nice to use API and an accompanying howto. Except that, alas, it 
seems this API cannot make it into 4.2. Not to mention KDE code using 
PolicyKit.

> i'd also note that our downstreams haven't seen fit to write this code.

 Oh, don't worry, we actually love being ignored.

> along come a couple of people who decide to take it on. we ought to realize
> that this particular area is an important one and worth incubating with
> care. build excitement and commitment in these people, don't stonewall them
> until we end up with yet another bit of unmaintained cruft in extragear.
> and don't get me wrong, extragear is great, but only when used to its
> strengths rather than as a dumping ground. (a mistake i've made in the past
> myself.)

 Actually 'incubating' is a good word, since the auth agent 3 weeks back was 
just a useless heap of code (and sorry, but it looked pretty unmaintained to 
me at that time). Nobody is stonewalling anybody, it's the same rules like 
for everything else and it can go into kdebase the moment trunk is unfrozen. 
Which I support, just to make that clear, but I consider the reasons for 
doing that now as an exception to be pretty weak.

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
--------------------------------------------------------------
SUSE LINUX, s.r.o.   e-mail: l.lunak at suse.cz , l.lunak at kde.org
Lihovarska 1060/12   tel: +420 284 028 972
190 00 Prague 9      fax: +420 284 028 951
Czech Republic       http://www.suse.cz