Et tu, KDE?

[pkubaj]

■Deprecating HAL and several other technologies lower in the stack (I’m not even sure which, but HAL is the biggie). The support burden for these technologies is being moved to the platforms that (still) use them. These platforms include Solaris, FreeBSD and Slackware Linux. Possibly more. This mostly affects libraries that KDE wraps around the lower-down technologies, like Solid. It’s an understandable decision, and I vaguely hope it ushers in a whole lot of test- and test-script writing in order to test various back ends (of which I guess we need at least four, now: Windows, MacOSX, HAL and udev).

http://euroquis.nl/bobulate/?p=1193

So, with XFCE not already not supporting HAL and GNOME folks going to stop supporting it with 3.2, FreeBSD seems to have become completely irrelevant for developers x(

 

[wblock@]

HAL has been optional for Xorg on FreeBSD for a long time. While it does provide input device hotplugging, it turns out that's not a big feature for most people. The big missing feature is automounting of hotplugged storage devices. FreeBSD can implement that feature with devd(8), and a couple of working scripts to do that have been posted here. So don't panic. Where work needs to be done is integrating devd use into the DE systems.

 

[pkubaj]

Wait, so Hal isn't responsible for handling mouse / keyboard autodetection? Then it doesn't matter, I don't mind mounting CD's / DVD's / pendrives manually...

BTW I've read somewhere that KDE has some abstraction layer, which makes use of any hardware detection system (like Hal or devd) that's inside of an OS. Shouldn't it support devd anyway, then?

 

[wblock@]

Wait, so Hal isn't responsible for handling mouse / keyboard autodetection?

There's autodetection (figuring out what hardware is attached on xorg startup), and there's hotplugging (attaching devices after startup). On FreeBSD, xorg doesn't need HAL to autodetect mouse and keyboard. Haven't experimented with hotplugging much, but plugging in another USB mouse or keyboard works fine, with both devices active.

BTW I've read somewhere that KDE has some abstraction layer, which makes use of any hardware detection system (like Hal or devd) that's inside of an OS. Shouldn't it support devd anyway, then?

That sounds like a decent idea. As to whether it works with devd, you'd have to ask the KDE people, or the FreeBSD KDE porters.