modularity of DISPLAYMANAGERS

Rex Dieter rdieter at math.unl.edu
Wed Sep 1 15:10:23 UTC 2004


Rudolf Kastl wrote:

>>So what *is* the point?

> I want to be able to package alternative displaymanagers in a way it can
> work "out of the box" the current way requires the user to hack some
> config files 

I don't consider editing /etc/sysconfig/desktop a hack, but that's just me.

> and since SWITCHDESK needs a replacement anyways and the
> freedesktop.org standard seems to be yet missing the DISPLAYMANAGER part
> its a pretty sucky solution imho. 

I will say here that it seems you're tackling several different 
problems/issues here (though your intention sounds to unify the setup 
for these):
1.  What DISPLAYMANAGER (ie, login manger) to use by default.
2.  What DESKTOP to use by default
3.  Installing/using *new* DISPLAYMANGERs
4.  Installing *new* DESKTOPs complete with full support from
     a. switchdesk.
     b. all/existing (standard-compliant) DISPLAYMANAGERs

Now, if you want more than what I mentioned here, please elaborate.

As I've said (and won't again), I think (1),(2),(3) are handled nicely 
already via /etc/sysconfig/desktop

For (4a), I agree switchdesk could use improvement:
Offhand, it appeared to me at first as though dropping a new 
Xclients.foodm into
/usr/share/switchdesk
would be enough to make it work, but alas, there's a bunch of stuff 
hard-coded into
/usr/bin/switchdesk-helper

For (4b), DISPLAYMANGER support for new desktops, I agree that needs 
standardization.  At least in the case of gdm and kdm, they seem quasi 
standardized, but don't look in the same place for options 
(/usr/share/xsessions for gdm, and /usr/share/apps/kdm/sessions for 
kdm).  It would appear gdm is doing the better thing here.  IMO, kdm (or 
any DISPLAYMANAGER) should follow suit and use /usr/share/xsessions (or 
some other agreed-upon, shared location).

-- Rex





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