[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#501576: Bug#501576: libpolkit2: requires files from policykit, but doesn't declare that

[James Westby]

On Wed, 2008-10-08 at 18:01 +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
> This is known issue.
> I already discussed this with davidz quite some time ago (I noticed it
> when I tried to enable the policykit support in consolekit).
> There were also quite lengthy discussion about this topic on the hal
> mailing list about circular dependencies between CK and PK.

Thanks, I wasn't aware that this topic had been dicussed. I'm aware
of the discussion over the circular dependency, and I agree with you.

> We couldn't agree on a acceptable solution yet.
> Some ideas floating around, were:
> a.) ship PolicyKit.conf in libpolkit2. Imo a no-go, as it would make
> future library transitions painful (libpolkit2 and libpolkit3 wouldn't
> be co-installable)
> b.) Create the config file in libpolkit2.postinst. Would be quite
> hackish, and we'd have to move the user creation into
> libpolkit2.postinst, so we can successfully chown the file.
> c.) Move the *single* conf file into a separate package
> libpolkit-common. Quite some overhead
> d.) Do nothing within libpolkit2. Other software should gracefully
> handle the case, when polkit_context_init fails.
> e.) Change polkit_context_init to not fail if PolicyKit.conf is not
> present. Don't think this is a good idea.

Can I ask why not e? As I point out in the upstream bug the
non-existance of the file isn't fatal when it is read to determine
the settings, so unless it is relying on the calling code stopping
after polkit_context_init failure it allows an empty file.

Just to clarify, the problem also applies to the policy dir and
the PolicyKit.reload file.

Thanks,

James