PolicyKit-authentication-agents in Fedora

[Matthias Clasen]

On Wed, 2010-04-14 at 10:47 +0200, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 14.04.2010, 10:25 +0200 schrieb Jaroslav Reznik:
> 
> > Hi Matthias.
> > We were discussing polkit agent reorganization @ our kde sig meeting - 
> > cwickert joined us too [1].
> > Could you clarify autostart of the agent? I agree it should be task for 
> > desktop as it's now core component and I don't see need for users to change 
> > this configuration. 
> 
> I do. Xfce for example has no agent ATM, so users should be free to
> choose ether polkit-gnome or lxpolkit. This could be easily done it we
> allowed installing them individually. The choice which one is started
> could be easily done graphically in the session properties.
> 
> If I understood Matthias correctly he wants the desktop to autostart the
> agent and have it hardcoded somewhere. IMHO this is a step in the wrong
> direction as it takes the user the freedom to decide what he wants to
> use.

Sorry for the late response, I was away from mail for a few days.

So, I don't think I said 'hardcoded'. I don't care how hard or soft you
code it. The point is that it should be the responsibility of the
desktop environment to ensure that a polkit agent is available, not the
responsibility of individual apps or of polkit itself.

For GNOME, I'll simply move the polkit-gnome-authentication-agent
autostart file from polkit-gnome to gnome-session. (gdm already ships
its own autostart file for the login session).

> > But other question is - what about desktops without own 
> > polkit or even standalone wms? Another point is autostart desktop file - if the 
> > agent is going to be started by autostart desktop file, this autostart belongs 
> > to agent and should be distributed together in the agent package.
> 
> +1

No. Again, the responsibility for starting the agent lies with the
desktop, not with polkit. I frankly don't care if you 'build your own
desktop'. In that case, your favourite polkit agent is just one more
thing to throw in your .Xclients file.