RFC: Kernel changes that may affect desktops

[Ding Yi Chen]

----- "Matthew Garrett" <mjg at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 05:48:44PM +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> > Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > What changes are needed to the desktop?
> >
> > The big problem we've been facing integrating new features of core
> system
> > services into KDE so far was lack of documentation. What do we need
> to
> > change?
> 
> An event will be generated and a policy agent then needs to choose
> what 
> to do in terms of unmounting any media. The precise interface doesn't
> 
> exist yet, but will be documented.
> 
> > If this will be all handled within DeviceKit, then this will come by
> itself
> > with the Solid DeviceKit backend ltinkl is working on, but if we
> need to
> > add some desktop interaction for it, we have to know what it should
> be.
> 
> So, what you'll get is a notification that a block device has
> requested 
> removal along with a notification that a dock device is being
> undocked. 
> What you do with the block device is up to you, but in general you'll
> 
> want to unmount it. Whether you're willing to kill applications that 
> have open files on it is a policy decision. After the unmount you'll 
> then trigger the completion of the undock and tell the user that it's
> 
> now safe to remove their hardware.

IMHO, it is pretty much similar to the way that we handle USB hubs and devices.

In terms of UI, it may have a nice dock status icon to show status and to be pressed 
if users want to un-dock safely.

Yet we still need to handle the force-undock event, just like we handle the
forced unplug USB devices.

-- 
Ding-Yi Chen
Software Engineer
Internationalization Group
Red Hat, Inc.

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