Root privileges in Desktop Entry Spec [SoC]

[Mike Hearn]

Manu wrote:

> I will be concentrating on the root privileges (rather than a more 
> general "other-user" privilege).

That's probably a good idea. I don't think anybody has enough experience 
with MAC on desktops to be worrying about SELinux integration just yet 
(despite what i've said in the past ;)

> I believe that adding a
>
>     RootRequired=yes|no|optional
>
> to the Desktop Entry Specs would do the job ? (Then, I should make the 
> items with a "RootRequired=yes" field to be hidden for non-sudoers).

That looks OK to me. I know we could use this in autopackage once widely 
adopted,  right now we do all our own user switching/authentication.

So the next step is to write a couple of patches:

a) For the specification XML document
b) For the GNOME panel
c) Ideally, for the KDE panel too

Then post to the relevant mailing lists for GNOME/KDE and get feedback 
from the more experienced developers there. If they are happy with it, 
submit the patches to bugzilla and work with the maintainers to get them 
checked in.

At various points people may say, "but I like feature XYZ" - that's 
fine, it may be necessary to adjust the spec slightly so these extra 
features can remain as desktop-specific extensions. But my advice to you 
would be to try and keep the core specification change minimal.

thanks -mike