Re: GDM status (again)

[Timothy Sample]

Andy Wingo <address@hidden> writes:

>> Do we really need a compile-time dependency (GDM in master doesn’t
>> depend on gnome-shell, after all), or can we just have a hard-coded
>> /run/current-system/bin/gnome-shell somewhere?  Granted, that’s not very
>> elegant, but it might be good enough?
>>
>> Also, one can use GDM without using GNOME, so it would be best if GDM
>> didn’t depend on GNOME.
>
> This might be fine (and is what I was trying to do).  However this would
> mean that the GDM service should ensure that gnome-shell is there, which
> in practice is like having a dependency on GNOME or at least on
> gnome-shell.  My understanding is that GDM uses gnome-shell as the login
> greeter process, so you really can't use GDM without GNOME -- of course
> you can log in to some non-GNOME session but GDM itself will use
> gnome-shell.  Given that's the case, might as well depend on gnome-shell
> explicitly.

That’s my understanding too. GDM needs gnome-shell to run the greeter
interface. (I think that “gnome shell” at different times means both a
framework for making interfaces – like GDM’s greeter – and the
particular desktop interface used by Gnome 3. It’s a little confusing.)
Therefore, it should probably be one of GDM’s inputs. That being said,
to do it well would be a ton of work. First we would have to slice out
the library to avoid the circular dependency (like I mentioned earlier),
then we would probably want to revisit gnome-shell’s inputs because I
doubt it /needs/ libgweather (for instance) and I assume that people who
want to use GDM with i3 or whatever would like gnome-shell to be as slim
as possible.

Anyway, for now I am sprinkling references to “/run/current-system” in
the service definitions to make sure all the components find what they
are looking for. Later, when I can /actually/ start a usable session
with GDM :), I will try to clean things up a bit.

>> With this and the other changes you described, it looks like there’s
>> already a bunch of patches we could apply.  Would you like to send them?
>> :-)
>
> I'd be happy to review.  I'd also be happy to apply them :)  There's no
> currently-working thing to break -- we can only get better -- so I think
> it's OK to noodle on the problem in master.
>

OK. I will try and send a proper patch this evening. Thanks for the
encouragement.


-- Tim