DeviceKit
Summary
DeviceKit is a simple system service that a) can enumerate devices; b) emits signals when devices are added removed; c) provides a way to merge device information / quirks onto devices. It is designed to partially replace hal and overcome some of the design limitiations of hal.
Apart from DeviceKit itself, there is DeviceKit-disks, which is a system service to keep track of block devices, and gnome-disk-utility, which is a graphical frontend for DeviceKit-disks.
Furthermore, there will be a nautilus extension to format disks.
Owner
- Name: DavidZeuthen
Current status
- Targeted release: Fedora 10
- Last updated: 2008-07-02
- Percentage of completion: 50%
DeviceKit is still not in rawhide, since there are still some device-mapper prerequisites missing. The current goal is to have it in rawhide by F10 alpha.
Detailed Description
David has written an extensive explanation of the DeviceKit architecture, and the motivation for rewriting hal. Read all about it here
There is a dedicated DeviceKit mailing list now: [1]
Benefit to Fedora
Fedora gains a comprehensive graphical disk management tool which provides functionality that so far was almost exclusively available in the partitioning screen of anaconda. The tools integrate nicely into the desktop (by e.g. providing a "Format disk..." menuitem in the nautilus context menu where appropriate).
Scope
DeviceKit depends on bug fixes and enhancements in unreleased versions of a number of components, such as kernel, udev, mdadm, lvm. These will have to appear in rawhide first. Also, in order to peacefully coexist with DeviceKit-disks, hal will need to undergo disk-ectomy. Components which depend directly on the disk functionality in hal, such as gvfs, have to be ported to DeviceKit-disks.