KDE and Polkit, take 2

[Dario Freddi]

Hello people,

as you might or might not know, polkit-1 is about to be released and already 
used in some projects (last ConsoleKit update on Arch pulled in the latest 
polkit development version). Thanks to the help from some guys from redhat 
(namely Jaroslav, Radek and Lukas), polkit-qt-1 is almost ready for review. 
Now it obviously comes to the point on how to behave in the switch.

I put out a small document here, with the help of the other guys, defining  a 
realistic plan for KDE: http://techbase.kde.org/Polkit-Qt-1

To summarize: policykit-0.9 will be default in KDE 4.4, polkit-1 will be 
provided as an extragear package (like it has been for policykit-0.9 in KDE 
4.2 if you remember), KAuth will default to the polkit-0.9 backend if both 0.9 
and 1 are found on the system (but a polkit-1 backend will be provided.

By the time KDE 4.5 will be out we will be moving polkit-qt-0.9 out of 
kdesupport, somewhere like gitorious, pull the polkit-1 support package into 
workspace and place in extragear or somewhere the current PolicyKit-kde 
directory. We will switch preferences in KAuth backends, so that we can 
deprecate completely polkit-0.9, but still provide some people the possibility 
of running it.

Now, I know every distribution will ship 4.4 with polkit-1. But, even if 
polkit-1 is a huge improvement for everyone, it's not even final, and we're 
short on time on our components. Moreover, it's not still in feature parity 
with polkit-0.9 (it still does not have an authorization manager), and I'd 
like to avoid regressions for users. I think you can understand the reasoning 
behind this decision.

Feedback and opinions are of course welcome.

P.S.: If anyone was wondering how to make kde programs using KAuth using 
polkit-1 when the backend will come, just clean your build, uninstall your 
KDE, and recompile telling KAuth to use the polkit-1 backend (CMake switch 
coming soon). Soooo easy

/me laughs watching everyone else outside KDE porting their applications and 
going through pain

-- 
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Dario Freddi
KDE Developer
GPG Key Signature: 511A9A3B
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