Revision as of 22:43, 12 August 2013

Migrate to Bluez 5

Summary

BlueZ is the Linux Bluetooth stack for managing wireless Bluetooth devices. In Fedora 20, we are going to switch from BlueZ version 4 to version 5.

Owner

Name: Bastien Nocera, Kalev Lember, and the desktop SIG
Email: bnocera@redhat.com, kalevlember@gmail.com
Release notes owner:

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora 20
Last updated: 2013-08-12
Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

The BlueZ project recently released BlueZ version 5. Compared to BlueZ version 4, the new release brings new features and improvements, however it is also accompanied by a significant API change. The BlueZ versions 4 and 5 are not parallel installable, and we need coordination between various parts of Fedora to switch over at the same time.

This is coming late after the Change Proposals Submission Deadline. As this affects various critical parts of the distribution (KDE, GNOME, NetworkManager, pulseaudio), we wanted to be sure it is feasible to switch everything over at the same time, and were considering postponing it to Fedora 21. However, upstreams have made good progress with porting over to BlueZ 5 and we feel it would be beneficial for Fedora to switch over during the Fedora 20 timeframe.

Benefit to Fedora

This keeps the Bluetooth stack in Fedora up to date. BlueZ 4 is no longer maintained upstream; switching to BlueZ 5 ensures we can get all the latest upstream bug fixes and enhancements.

Scope

BlueZ 5 uses a D-Bus API that's not compatible with BlueZ 4 and as such, management applications and a number of libraries and daemons need to be ported.

Proposal owners:

This is a change affecting many parts of the distribution. The proposal owners, supported by the rest of the Desktop SIG, are going to take care of updating the BlueZ package to version 5 and porting over gnome-bluetooth, NetworkManager, and PulseAudio packages.

KDE SIG:

The bluetooth stack for KDE is BlueDevil. It has a git branch with BlueZ 5 support and the Fedora KDE SIG will handle updating the package to a git snapshot.

Desktop SIG:

For GNOME 3.10, Gustavo Padovan and Bastien Nocera have been porting gnome-bluetooth, NetworkManager and PulseAudio to BlueZ 5, and the Fedora Desktop SIG will ensure these get updated to the BlueZ 5 versions in Fedora.

NetworkManager team:

... will ensure the relevant NetworkManager changes land in Fedora 20.

Other developers:

Bluez4 and Bluez5 are not parallel-installable, and incompatible, so other applications relying on Bluez4 will need to be ported by their respective maintainers.

Release engineering:

No release engineering coordination required.

Policies and guidelines:

No changes needed in the packaging guidelines.

Upgrade/compatibility impact

BlueZ ships a daemon and provides two main interfaces for applications to use it:

libbluetooth shared library

The library ABI hasn't changed and the soname in 5.x is still the same as was in 4.x: libbluetooth.so.3, so the upgrade/compatibility impact should be minimal. Everything should be able to continue working without needing even a simple rebuild.

BlueZ D-Bus API

The D-Bus API has had major changes. Most major consumers should be ported over during the Fedora 20 timeframe, with one exception:

blueman

Blueman is abandoned upstream and is going to be dropped from Fedora 20. The following mailing list post includes the relevant details: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2013-August/187223.html

How To Test

Testing the change requires having Bluetooth capable hardware. Major functionality should keep working without regressions, compared to BlueZ 4 in Fedora 19.

User Experience

User experience should change minimally.

Dependencies

This requires coordination between the kernel team, the Desktop team, the KDE team, and various other package maintainers. The proposal owners will handle the coordination.

Contingency Plan

If there are major regressions before Fedora 20 release, it is feasible to revert the BlueZ 5 related changes and revert back to BlueZ 4. The upstream GNOME release team is also keeping an eye open for regressions, and will revert back to BlueZ 4 for GNOME 3.10 (due in September) if there are major regressions in either GNOME, NetworkManager or PulseAudio.

Documentation

LWN introduction to BlueZ 5: http://lwn.net/Articles/531133/

BlueZ 5 porting guide: http://www.bluez.org/bluez-5-api-introduction-and-porting-guide/

Release Notes

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 == Summary ==
-BlueZ is the Linux Bluetooth stack for managing wireless Bluetooth devices. In Fedora 20, we are going to switch from BlueZ version 4 to BlueZ version 5.
+BlueZ is the Linux Bluetooth stack for managing wireless Bluetooth devices. In Fedora 20, we are going to switch from BlueZ version 4 to version 5.
 == Owner ==
@@ Line 30: / Line 30: @@
 This is coming late after the Change Proposals Submission Deadline. As this affects various critical parts of the distribution (KDE, GNOME, NetworkManager, pulseaudio), we wanted to be sure it is feasible to switch everything over at the same time, and were considering postponing it to Fedora 21. However, upstreams have made good progress with porting over to BlueZ 5 and we feel it would be beneficial for Fedora to switch over during the Fedora 20 timeframe.
-LWN introduction to BlueZ 5: http://lwn.net/Articles/531133/
-BlueZ 5 porting guide: http://www.bluez.org/bluez-5-api-introduction-and-porting-guide/
 == Benefit to Fedora ==
@@ Line 40: / Line 36: @@
 == Scope ==
-BlueZ 5 uses a D-Bus API that's not compatible with BlueZ 4 and as such, management applications and a number of libraries and daemons will need to be ported.
+BlueZ 5 uses a D-Bus API that's not compatible with BlueZ 4 and as such, management applications and a number of libraries and daemons need to be ported.
 * Proposal owners:
-<!-- What work do the feature owners have to accomplish to complete the feature in time for release?  Is it a large change affecting many parts of the distribution or is it a very isolated change? What are those changes?-->
+This is a change affecting many parts of the distribution. The proposal owners, supported by the rest of the Desktop SIG, are going to take care of updating the BlueZ package to version 5 and porting over gnome-bluetooth, NetworkManager, and PulseAudio packages.
-Gustavo Padovan and Bastien Nocera have been porting gnome-bluetooth, NetworkManager and PulseAudio to BlueZ 5.
-* Other developers: <!-- REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM WIDE CHANGES -->
+* KDE SIG:
-<!-- What work do other developers have to accomplish to complete the feature in time for release?  Is it a large change affecting many parts of the distribution or is it a very isolated change? What are those changes?-->
+The bluetooth stack for KDE is BlueDevil. It has a git branch with BlueZ 5 support and the Fedora KDE SIG will handle updating the package to a git snapshot.
+* Desktop SIG:
+For GNOME 3.10, Gustavo Padovan and Bastien Nocera have been porting gnome-bluetooth, NetworkManager and PulseAudio to BlueZ 5, and the Fedora Desktop SIG will ensure these get updated to the BlueZ 5 versions in Fedora.
+* NetworkManager team:
+... will ensure the relevant NetworkManager changes land in Fedora 20.
+* Other developers:
 Bluez4 and Bluez5 are not parallel-installable, and incompatible, so
 other applications relying on Bluez4 will need to be ported by their
 respective maintainers.
-* Release engineering: <!-- REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM WIDE CHANGES -->
+* Release engineering:
 No release engineering coordination required.
-<!-- Does this feature require coordination with release engineering (e.g. changes to installer image generation or update package delivery)?  Is a mass rebuid required?  If a rel-eng ticket exists, add a link here.  -->
-* Policies and guidelines: <!-- REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM WIDE CHANGES -->
+* Policies and guidelines:
 No changes needed in the packaging guidelines.
-<!-- Do the packaging guidelines or other documents need to be updated for this feature?  If so, does it need to happen before or after the implementation is done?  If a FPC ticket exists, add a link here. -->
 == Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
-<!-- What happens to systems that have had a previous versions of Fedora installed and are updated to the version containing this change? Will anything require manual configuration or data migration? Will any existing functionality be no longer supported? -->
 BlueZ ships a daemon and provides two main interfaces for applications
 to use it:
-=== libbluetooth shared library ===
+==== libbluetooth shared library ====
 The library ABI hasn't changed and the soname in 5.x is still the same
-as was in 4.x: libbluetooth.so.3, so the impact should be minimal.
+as was in 4.x: libbluetooth.so.3, so the upgrade/compatibility impact should be minimal.
 Everything should be able to continue working without needing even a
 simple rebuild.
-=== org.bluez D-Bus API ===
+==== BlueZ D-Bus API ====
-Not all packages that use the org.bluez D-Bus service have a dependency on the bluez package. This makes it hard to find all the consumers; there's probably a number of applications that use
+The D-Bus API has had major changes. Most major consumers should be ported over during the Fedora 20 timeframe, with one exception:
-bluez via D-Bus without requiring it as a dependency if the functionality isn't the main one, so there's likely going to be other impacted packages.
-* blueman          (Status: needs porting to BlueZ 5)
+* blueman
-* gnome-bluetooth  (Status: ported)
-* libbluedevil     (Status: port available in a git branch, https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/108912/)
+Blueman is abandoned upstream and is going to be dropped from Fedora 20. The following mailing list post includes the relevant details: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2013-August/187223.html
-* NetworkManager   (Status: in progress)
-* pulseaudio       (Status: in progress)
-* obex-data-server (Status: obsoleted and not ported to BlueZ 5)
-* gvfs-obexftp     (Status: won't be ported)
 == How To Test ==
-<!-- This does not need to be a full-fledged document. Describe the dimensions of tests that this change implementation is expected to pass when it is done.  If it needs to be tested with different hardware or software configurations, indicate them.  The more specific you can be, the better the community testing can be.
-Remember that you are writing this how to for interested testers to use to check out your change implementation - documenting what you do for testing is OK, but it's much better to document what *I* can do to test your change.
+Testing the change requires having Bluetooth capable hardware. Major functionality should keep working without regressions, compared to BlueZ 4 in Fedora 19.
-A good "how to test" should answer these four questions:
-. What special hardware / data / etc. is needed (if any)?
-. How do I prepare my system to test this change? What packages
-need to be installed, config files edited, etc.?
-. What specific actions do I perform to check that the change is
-working like it's supposed to?
-. What are the expected results of those actions?
--->
-<!-- REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM WIDE CHANGES -->
-N/A (not a System Wide Change)
 == User Experience ==
-<!-- If this change proposal is noticeable by its target audience, how will their experiences change as a result?  Describe what they will see or notice. -->
+User experience should change minimally.
-<!-- REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM WIDE CHANGES -->
-N/A (not a System Wide Change)
 == Dependencies ==
-<!-- What other packages (RPMs) depend on this package?  Are there changes outside the developers' control on which completion of this change depends?  In other words, completion of another change owned by someone else and might cause you to not be able to finish on time or that you would need to coordinate?  Other upstream projects like the kernel (if this is not a kernel change)? -->
+This requires coordination between the kernel team, the Desktop team, the KDE team, and various other package maintainers. The proposal owners will handle the coordination.
-<!-- REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM WIDE CHANGES -->
-N/A (not a System Wide Change)
 == Contingency Plan ==
-<!-- If you cannot complete your feature by the final development freeze, what is the backup plan?  This might be as simple as "Revert the shipped configuration".  Or it might not (e.g. rebuilding a number of dependent packages).  If you feature is not completed in time we want to assure others that other parts of Fedora will not be in jeopardy.  -->
+If there are major regressions before Fedora 20 release, it is feasible to revert the BlueZ 5 related changes and revert back to BlueZ 4. The upstream GNOME release team is also keeping an eye open for regressions, and will revert back to BlueZ 4 for GNOME 3.10 (due in September) if there are major regressions in either GNOME, NetworkManager or PulseAudio.
-* Contingency mechanism: (What to do?  Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)  <!-- REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM WIDE CHANGES -->
-<!-- When is the last time the contingency mechanism can be put in place?  This will typically be the beta freeze. -->
-* Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)  <!-- REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM WIDE CHANGES -->
-<!-- Does finishing this feature block the release, or can we ship with the feature in incomplete state? -->
-* Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No <!-- REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM WIDE CHANGES -->
 == Documentation ==
 <!-- Is there upstream documentation on this change, or notes you have written yourself?  Link to that material here so other interested developers can get involved. -->
-<!-- REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM WIDE CHANGES -->
+LWN introduction to BlueZ 5: http://lwn.net/Articles/531133/
-N/A (not a System Wide Change)
+BlueZ 5 porting guide: http://www.bluez.org/bluez-5-api-introduction-and-porting-guide/
 == Release Notes ==

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