Desktop Entry Spec : RootRequired entry

[Rodney Dawes]

This seems like the wrong way to go about this to me. There are some
things users SHOULD see in the menu AND that require elevated priveleges
to use. Changing the date/time, software update tools, file sharing with
samba, are just some examples.

If your menus are overly cluttered, it might be better to think about
how some of these things can be consolidated, or reorganized, so that
the menus are not as cluttered. I don't think we should be putting
workarounds for usability/design issues within the specs.

-- dobey


On Mon, 2005-08-29 at 02:34 +0200, Manu Cornet wrote:
> 
> Hello !
> 
> We had this subject discussed a few weeks ago, but as it gets more 
> precise, here's a short rationale and a patch (attached) for the 
> desktop-entry-spec.
> 
> ##############################   Purpose   #############################
> 
> The purpose is to hide, in the menus, programs that require elevated 
> privileges from non admin users, therefore reducing application clutter. 
>   A side effect would be to allow some distribution maintainers not to 
> manually prepend, for example, "gksudo" to the "Exec" value for these 
> entries.
> 
> ###########################   Specification   ##########################
> 
> The new key is RootRequired=yes|no|optional. It basically specifies 
> whether the program needs elevated privileges ; if "optional", the 
> program needs the privileges to fulfill all of its capabilities, but can 
> still be run and provide useful information if it hasn't.
> 
> ###############   Possible implementation and rationale   ##############
> 
> Now, apart from the spec, here's the most probable interpretation of 
> this. A boolean environment variable (USER_IS_ADMIN) could be set, each 
> distribution using its preferred way (for example, Ubuntu has an "admin" 
> group) to set it. Then the values of RootRequired would be used as follows :
> 
> * "yes" : if USER_IS_ADMIN == 1, display the entry in the menus and use 
> elevated privileges (eg prepend "gksudo" to the Exec value). Otherwise, 
> hide the entry from the menus.
> 
> * "no" : do nothing (do not hide the entry, do not modify the Exec value).
> 
> * "optional" : do not hide the entry. If USER_IS_ADMIN == 1, use 
> elevated privileges ; otherwise, don't.
> 
> * If USER_IS_ADMIN is not set or the RootRequired key doesn't exist in 
> the entry, assume the value is "no".
> 
> 
> Doing this will allow the following :
> 
> 1) Non-admin users don't see all these programs for which they don't 
> have the authorization anyway.
> 
> 2) Elevated privileges are automatically used when needed.
> 
> 3) Some programs, for example package management tools, can be run 
> without elevated privileges (eg list installed packages, search for a 
> particular package), but still need them for more control (eg actually 
> install new packages). By using the "optional" value, non-admin users 
> can still perform non-admin actions, while admin users can use the full 
> capabilities of the program.
> 
> 
> That's it :o) The attached patch adds the RootRequired key to the 
> desktop-entry-spec. Can it be committed ?