[LightDM] Hard dependency on AccountsService

[Robert Ancell]

On 18 August 2011 15:02, PCMan <pcman.tw at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 9:50 AM, Robert Ancell <robert.ancell at gmail.com>
>> Is LXDE opposed to the concept or the particular implementation?
>
> The concept looks good, but I just felt that we have more and more *Kit and
> *Service which kept us from KISS.
> Having many options is the best part of OSS world, but it's also the most
> problematic part.
> Sometimes having only one robust and simple solution for one problem is
> better than having a lot of various options.
> The best example for this is the ALSA/OSS/OSS4/Jack/esound mess.
> Someone wants to solve this with a common interface, pulseaudio.
> Apparently it brings more problems at the same time and make correctly
> configuring our systems difficult.
>
> UDisks is another example. Traditionally we have various ways for distros to
> control device access rights. With udisks and policykit, how to correctly
> configure user permissions becomes a FAQ and few people really know how to
> use them.
> If possible, I prefer avoiding unnecessary complexity added to existing
> stack. Most of time, KISS is better.
> I'm not against the idea, but I'm just worry about the increasing numbers of
> deamons, services, abstraction layers, and stacks.

The reason I see for a system like accounts service is the current API
for user accounts (i.e. the passwd, shadow and various config files /
programs) is old, inconsistent between OS's, hasn't changed in many
years and is unable/unwilling to do so.  It's not competing against
other services so it's not in the same problem as the audio system is
(who has responsibility for what in audio?).  The worst outcome would
be for multiple next generation accounts services to be created
instead of us all using the same one.

I think a modern service better meets the KISS principle, as the
current solution is highly complex and inconsistent.

Absolutely agree that systems like PolicyKit have very poor
documentation which makes them very hard to understand.