hal-info: making hardware updates easier

[Richard Hughes]

On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 01:36 +0100, Danny Kukawka wrote:
> On Tuesday 24 October 2006 23:55, Richard Hughes wrote:
> > The idea for versioning is for hal-info to use the date (e.g. 20061024)
> > for it's version, and for hal to not depend on any particular version of
> > hal-info. The idea being, hal is released every few months, but a new
> > release of hal-info every couple of weeks would be no bad thing.
> 
> Sorry, I forgot to comment, there is currently much work ...

No probs, it seems like everyone is busy. Busy is good, as busy = job
security :-)

> If you suggest this would make it easier for a linux distributor to update the 
> fdi information files, I would say: normally no, it make it not easier. 
> 
> Yes you don't need to update the HAL package, but:
> 
>  * if you e.g. and new keys/property you need to update the spec and this mean
>    normaly you need to update the HAL package

New keys added in hal-info should be ignored silently by older hal
packages.

>  * as a distributor you can't update the package for a relased version without  
>    QA work and this is at least the the same as if you update HAL, because you
>    need to be sure that a change in the fdi-files change the behavior of HAL 
>    and the applications which use HAL.

Sure, but the *risk* of breaking stuff has to be an order of magnitude
less, and no new dependencies (like this crazy new PolicyKit thing ;-)
are added. It's up to the distro to decide, but I think anything is
easier than now.

Cheers,

Richard.