Authorizations is old and should be hidden

Agreed.

Tentatively assigning to the desktop team, but I can do this if it gets
round to it.

Thanks,

James

Attached is a patch that adds NoDisplay=true to the .desktop file.

Oh, sorry, I didn't notice that the bug had been assigned to someone else. Is it all right if I work on it?

(Oh, I also just realised that I haven't followed the patch tagging guidelines, I'll fix that right after supper.)

Here's the patch, properly tagged this time.

I haven't looked at the patch yet, but I'm slightly confused why you've got this installed on your system. policykit-gnome isn't installed by default anymore (it's in Universe), and all the GNOME components we use have been ported to the new Policykit API.

On Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:20:55 -0000, Chris Coulson <email address hidden> wrote:
> I haven't looked at the patch yet, but I'm slightly confused why you've
> got this installed on your system. policykit-gnome isn't installed by
> default anymore (it's in Universe), and all the GNOME components we use
> have been ported to the new Policykit API.

Some non-default applications won't have been ported yet?

Perhaps if people have it installed because something is using it then
they will want to configure things, implying that we shouldn't hide it,
and just wait until it is removed.

Thanks,

James

I hadn't noticed that, Chris Coulsen. You're right, it's not installed by default from a Ubuntu CD.

The following includes my comments:

$ apt-cache rdepends policykit-gnome
policykit-gnome
Reverse Depends:
  xubuntu-desktop # depends, in universe
  gnome-mount # depends, in universe
  gnome-lirc-properties # depends, in universe
  policykit # suggests, in main

I installed all of those packages and ran polkit-gnome-authorization, and I only got five configurable settings: one under org.gnome.lirc-properties.mechanism and four under org.freedesktop.policykit.

To me, this means that polkit-gnome-authorization is practically useless and should be hidden. Users of Xubuntu at least will appreciate it.

I'm actually considering solving this in a slightly more radical way. I examined the remaining reverse dependencies of policykit-gnome, and it's not a lot.

reverse dependency tree:

policykit-gnome
  gnome-lirc-properties
  gnome-mount
    gnome-volume-manager
      libipoddevice
        hipo
  xubuntu-desktop
  xorg-options-editor-gtk
  gnome-api-docs (on -doc)

 * gnome-mount and gnome-volume-manager are obsolete and should just be removed.
 * libipoddevice should drop the g-v-m/hal recommends, they are obsolete and handled by gvfs/udisks now
 * xubuntu-desktop should drop its policykit-gnome dependency, I doubt that they use it for anything.
 * xorg-options-editor-gtk sounds old fashioned and could just go; I asked Bryce/Alberto about this
 * Once the previous things are solved, gnome-api-docs can drop its dependency on policykit-gnome-doc

Once that's done, policykit-gnome can be removed from lucid, and policykit-1-gnome can get a Conflicts:/Replaces: to clean up policykit-gnome on upgrades.

Thoughts?

In any case I believe the policykit-gnome dependency of xubuntu-desktop is obsolete. Can you please drop it?

This bug was fixed in the package libipoddevice - 0.5.3-3.2ubuntu2

---------------
libipoddevice (0.5.3-3.2ubuntu2) lucid; urgency=low

  * Drop gnome-volume-manager dependencies, it's obsolete and about to be
    removed. (LP: #530829)
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:59:48 +0100

This bug was fixed in the package meta-gnome2 - 1:2.28+1ubuntu2

---------------
meta-gnome2 (1:2.28+1ubuntu2) lucid; urgency=low

  * Replace obsolete policykit-doc/policykit-gnome-doc with policykit-1-doc.
    (LP: #530829)
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:03:07 +0100

2010-03-03 09:05:42 INFO Removing candidates:
2010-03-03 09:05:42 INFO gnome-mount 0.8-2ubuntu1 in lucid
2010-03-03 09:05:42 INFO gnome-mount 0.8-2ubuntu1 in lucid amd64
2010-03-03 09:05:42 INFO gnome-mount 0.8-2ubuntu1 in lucid armel
2010-03-03 09:05:42 INFO gnome-mount 0.8-2ubuntu1 in lucid i386
2010-03-03 09:05:42 INFO gnome-mount 0.8-2ubuntu1 in lucid ia64
2010-03-03 09:05:42 INFO gnome-mount 0.8-2ubuntu1 in lucid powerpc
2010-03-03 09:05:42 INFO gnome-mount 0.8-2ubuntu1 in lucid sparc
2010-03-03 09:05:42 INFO Removed-by: Martin Pitt
2010-03-03 09:05:42 INFO Comment: obsoleted by udisks

2010-03-03 09:06:20 INFO Removing candidates:
2010-03-03 09:06:20 INFO gnome-volume-manager 2.24.1-3ubuntu1 in lucid
2010-03-03 09:06:20 INFO gnome-volume-manager 2.24.1-3ubuntu1 in lucid amd64
2010-03-03 09:06:20 INFO gnome-volume-manager 2.24.1-3ubuntu1 in lucid armel
2010-03-03 09:06:20 INFO gnome-volume-manager 2.24.1-3ubuntu1 in lucid i386
2010-03-03 09:06:20 INFO gnome-volume-manager 2.24.1-3ubuntu1 in lucid ia64
2010-03-03 09:06:20 INFO gnome-volume-manager 2.24.1-3ubuntu1 in lucid powerpc
2010-03-03 09:06:20 INFO gnome-volume-manager 2.24.1-3ubuntu1 in lucid sparc
2010-03-03 09:06:20 INFO Removed-by: Martin Pitt
2010-03-03 09:06:20 INFO Comment: obsolete, gvfs/nautilus do that now, and ivman is a more lightweight obsolete alternative
2010-03-03 09:06:20 INFO 7 packages successfully removed.

I checked gnome-lirc-properties, and it still needs to be ported. I filed bug 531202 about it and added it to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/PolicyKitOneMigration .

hipo isn't even using libipoddevice, so the build dependency should just go (it already did in karmic, but somebody synced it and dropped that change). Chris will upload hipo again.

So I removed libipoddevice from lucid again (it was already removed in karmic, but synced back), and blacklisted it this time.

I talked to Alberto, and he confirmed that xorg-options-editor-gtk is obsolete. So I removed it from lucid.

So the tree is now down to

policykit-gnome
  gnome-lirc-properties
  xubuntu-desktop

Where xubuntu-desktop has an obvious fix (I just can't commit to the seed branch), and gnome-lirc-properties really needs porting. Thus nothing else should pull in policykit-gnome any more.

This bug was fixed in the package policykit-gnome - 0.9.2-2ubuntu2

---------------
policykit-gnome (0.9.2-2ubuntu2) lucid; urgency=low

  * 03-desktop_file_nodisplay.patch: Hide the menu item as it is
    out of date. (LP: #530829)
 -- David D Lowe <email address hidden> Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:32:04 +0000

I've uploaded hipo without the libipoddevice-dev build-depend now

This bug was fixed in the package xubuntu-meta - 2.107

---------------
xubuntu-meta (2.107) lucid; urgency=low

  * Refreshed dependencies
  * Removed policykit-gnome from desktop lp: #530829
  * Refreshed dependencies
  * Added libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio to desktop, we already ship
    gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio instead of gstreamer0.10-alsa by default
    because of gdm, so no need to keep libsdl1.2debian-alsa. lp: #531161
  * Removed libsdl1.2debian-alsa from desktop
 -- Lionel Le Folgoc <email address hidden> Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:01:40 +0100

Terribly sorry to bug here but - why exactly is PolicyKit and Authorizations deprecated?

How may I replicate its permission-setting features?

PolicyKit is not deprecated, it's only been updated to the latest version. Unfortunately, the Authorizations tool hasn't kept up with PolicyKit's updates and is almost useless in Ubuntu Lucid. You can configure permissions manually, see the manual for pklocalauthority.