[22:19] if it's not available here, and likely won't be, within the next few months, that's going to have to be a no [22:19] GNOME 2.14 is most likely going to need it to do things that already work without it. [22:19] I may have to port it. [22:20] that's kind of the situation we're in [22:20] Work had already been done on it, but the guy that did the work disappeared. [22:20] I have his stuff, and will probably use that as a base. [22:20] I'm just so bust right now with work and GNOME 2.12. [22:20] but I'm about to go to the KDE conference, and I need to make a report on tuesday what the situation is (and unfortunately, I don't know if we can even offer any useful help, it's all glibby and stuff) [22:21] heh [22:21] That's not what needs work. [22:21] ok, we would not put a hard dependency on HAL (if ever) before KDE 4 [22:21] that's not due out for ~10-12 months [22:21] What needs to be done is write the code to read devinfo(3), sysctl, devd, etc. [22:22] here's the options I have: [22:22] 1) do simply a hal wrapper in KDE (I would design my own api, but the hal spec wouldn't be hidden, properties being named as is) (that's someone else saying that, not me specifically :) [22:22] 2) do a layer having frontend/backend and exposing something equivalent to the hal spec, writing a hal backend, and hoping that a freebsd backend would appear (that would be kde specific of course) [22:22] 3) do a layer having frontend/backend, hiding hal spec as much as possible, writing a hal backend, and hoping that freebsd backend would appear) [22:23] I don't see HAL on any platform other than Linux beign what it is on Linux today. [22:23] obviously 1 is much the easiest, and 3 would mean we don't have to care, but it'd be a hugely bigger job [22:24] oh the pressure, not to mention the irony, you get to decide the future of KDE :) [22:25] (with the implication, if we don't support it, it might in fact lose any hope of becoming a real standard) [22:25] I think effort should be put into making HAL work in its current form in some way on FreeBSD. [22:25] <_Steve_> that would rock