Migration to ConsoleKit2?

[kraileth]

Everybody who advocates *BSD to Linux people now and then knows some of the typical negative responses. One that at least I have heard frequently from people who were open towards alternatives in general is that with BSD there's simply too much old cruft around to feel confortable with it. The problem with this answer is that it's hard to counter - it's simply the truth and we have to take that blame. Well, the commonly mentioned HAL is probably one sad story of its own, but there are other things.

Asking for help with a problem here on the forums recently, I've stumbled upon a package that I haven't seen for years when working with common Linux boxes for years: ConsoleKit. Freedesktop.org has given up on developing it in favor of logind. So we're using a package (for the not so insignificant task of tracking users and sessions) that has not seen much attention since 2011/2012 and been officially unmaintained since 2013. Now we obviously don't have systemd (and rightfully so!) and the seemingly halfhearted effort that was "systembsd" didn't have any real impact after GSoC 2014 closed. So far so bad.

However there are other projects that don't want systemd and they also still need consolekit. And the good news is that an Xfce developer took over and revived the project as consolekit2 (https://github.com/ConsoleKit2/ConsoleKit2). It has been actively developed since 2014, the latest commit was made today. It's not a one man show (people like OpenBSD's Antoine Jacoutot have made commits), looks pretty healthy and best of all: It is obviously very *BSD friendly. OpenBSD has adapted it as their consolekit in ports for a while and obviously their desktops still work.

There's a port for FreeBSD, too, and the Xfce page on the FreeBSD wiki mentiones the SVN repo that holds it:

Code: Select all

svn co https://subversion.assembla.com/svn/xfce4/trunk/sysutils/consolekit

Does anybody have any experience with it, yet? If it works for GhostBSD: Could we replace the old dead consolekit with it? It would probably also make sense for vanilla FreeBSD to upgrade the port for it.

I've just installed it on a test machine with GhostBSD MATE and I'm rebuilding ports that depend on it. I'll report if I find any problems with it and then try again using GhostBSD Xfce.

[ASX]

As you certainly know we are a very small team, thus we are realistically limited in what we can do:

To adopt a new component or generally speaking adopt a component not provided upstream from FreeBSD we need to improve our infrastructure and setup our own repo.

We have just made the first step, by migrating to a new server and our goal is to setup our own repository, however the whole process will need some more time.

After we will have our own repository up and running, we will be able to deploy our own software and/or third party software more easily and more important in a manageable way (in that we will be able to provide updates where required too).

So, thanks for the suggestion, but please be patient, we do what we can.

[kraileth]

As you certainly know we are a very small team, thus we are realistically limited in what we can do:

To adopt a new component or generally speaking adopt a component not provided upstream from FreeBSD we need to improve our infrastructure and setup our own repo.

You're right, of course. First I thought that it would probably not be such a big problem since it's just one package - a package that's not likely to receive further updates on the FreeBSD side. So as consolekit2 has a higher version number it would probably be fine to install it once with GhostBSD and then it might never be touched again. On second thought however I realized that a change like this is rather huge as it affects a lot of packages that are built against it. So either a custom package repo is needed or this would have to be upstreamed into FreeBSD. I think the later would benefit other projects as well and should in fact be the way to go.

I've read several times that GhostBSD is driven forward by a small team but so far I have no idea who you devs are (on the forums I had contact with you and eric and that's it). And especially I have no idea if any of you is a FreeBSD committer as well or things like that. However I think this might change in the future. I was already invited to IRC - for the time being I'm determined to get used to my new primary OS and bring a bit more life into the forums (you taking the time to respond helps a lot, thanks for that!). Then I intend to work on documentation again and decide if I can afford to dedicate some time in the long term and should get involved further. We'll see.

We have just made the first step, by migrating to a new server and our goal is to setup our own repository, however the whole process will need some more time.

After we will have our own repository up and running, we will be able to deploy our own software and/or third party software more easily and more important in a manageable way (in that we will be able to provide updates where required too).

That surely sounds interesting!

So, thanks for the suggestion, but please be patient, we do what we can.

Of course! Take your time - I've been involved with Open Source long enough to know how things work. I don't want press for anything here. It's just one suggestion (not even a truly "vital" one either) and not having it rejected for no obvious reason (things like that happen far too often...) is actually satisfying. Still I'm thinking that it would be best to get it into FreeBSD. I think I'm going to ask over at TrueOS as well as they already have their own ecosystem and have the experience with making big changes (LibreSSL in base and things like that). And the more people that can test if it breaks something, the better.

[ASX]

"I've read several times that GhostBSD is driven forward by a small team but so far I have no idea who you devs are (on the forums I had contact with you and eric and that's it). And especially I have no idea if any of you is a FreeBSD committer as well or things like that."

Hmm ... there used to be a page with the list of team, but apparently has gone away, possibly when migrating the website, not sure.
Anyway, GhostBSD is developed nearly exclusively from Eric, I joined him approx two years ago, after one of his post claiming something like "GhostBSD is one man job ...". At the time I was very newbie about *BSD, but not newbie in the unix/linux world, having some past experience, I took that as an opportunity to learn FreeBSD and I am mainly doing testing. Then there is "convbsd" Angescuo, who lately is absent due to personal issues, he mainly managed the build system and other Desktop related things. A few others join and leave or contribute occasionally.

That's all.

[kraileth]

Anyway, GhostBSD is developed nearly exclusively from Eric, I joined him approx two years ago, after one of his post claiming something like "GhostBSD is one man job ...". At the time I was very newbie about *BSD, but not newbie in the unix/linux world, having some past experience, I took that as an opportunity to learn FreeBSD and I am mainly doing testing. Then there is "convbsd" Angescuo, who lately is absent due to personal issues, he mainly managed the build system and other Desktop related things. A few others join and leave or contribute occasionally.

That's all.

Wow! That's one small team indeed... Knowing this my respect for what so few people achieve only grows. You do a fantastic job!

[ericbsd]

About ConsoleKit2 it is work in progress on FreeBSD, I have talk with and kwm and they need to get ck-list-session to report "active" under gnome with GDM, gnome theme will commit it. any help would be appreciated, the link of the status is https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_ ... ?id=202269.

[ASX]

Note that on 5 Aug 2017, consolekit was added to the freebsd ports tree.
https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/consolekit2/