0.5.9rc2

[David Zeuthen]

On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 17:54 -0500, Steev Klimaszewski wrote:
> David Zeuthen wrote:
> > Here's the 0.5.9rc2 release leading up to HAL 0.5.9.
> > 
> >  http://people.freedesktop.org/~david/dist/hal-0.5.9.rc2.tar.gz
> >  http://people.freedesktop.org/~david/dist/hal-info-20070326.tar.gz
> > 
> >>From now on only bugfixes etc. will be committed until 0.5.9 is out.
> > Please test this and provide feedback + patches. Thanks!
> > 
> >      David
> 
> I have a question regarding some of the directories created...
> 
> With Portage (Gentoo's package manager) everything is compiled from 
> source, typically sandboxed, before it is installed (think fakeroot I 
> guess from a debian system?)  and after a new version is installed, the 
> old version and any *empty* directories are removed...
> 
> Hal when make install is called, creates 
> /etc/hal/fdi/{information,preprobe,policy} however, these are empty, and 
> so when Portage removes the old version, it removes these directories, 
> and thus, hald won't start because they don't exist.
> 
> What is the purpose of them?  At the moment, I use what we have as a 
> command in ebuilds called keepdir which writes a dotfile into the 
> directory so they aren't removed.  Should I be attempting some other 
> method?  Is there some files that aren't getting installed?

I've clarified this a bit more here

 http://people.freedesktop.org/~david/hal-spec/hal-spec.html#id2790010

and I hope the spec now adequately explains that the directories
in /etc/hal/fdi serves the purpose of allowing the system
administrator / user to put in fdi files.

I've also changed the hal package to create the entire directory
structure, e.g.

        $ tree -d /etc/hal/ /usr/share/hal/fdi
        /etc/hal/
        `-- fdi
            |-- information
            |-- policy
            `-- preprobe
        /usr/share/hal/fdi
        |-- information
        |   |-- 10freedesktop
        |   `-- 20thirdparty
        |-- policy
        |   |-- 10osvendor
        |   `-- 20thirdparty
        `-- preprobe
            |-- 10osvendor
            `-- 20thirdparty
        
and finally I changed the hal-info package to conform to this (it was
creating the /etc/hal/fdi directories before). 

>From a packaging point of view, this is more correct, especially if the
distribution you are packaging hal/hal-info for is pedantic (See:
Fedora) about directory ownership. With this change all the directories
in the above structure will be owned by the hal package and hal-info
(that the hal package depends on) will just drop files into these
directories and should not own any directories by itself.

Does it make more sense now?

     David