hal-info
===

The information FDI scripts have been moved to a subpackage called hal-info.

Q: What is it?
A: hal-info is just a small hal package that provides hardware data and quirks.
   These quirks are currently things like what mice support reporting battery
   status, what music players are supported and what cameras are detected.
   This could also include a list of display adaptors that need resuming
   or a list of broken batteries that might explode.

Q: Why split the information data from the main tarball?
A: Well, policy and probing information is still in the daemon package where
   they belong. Hal is released every few months with updated
   dependencies and lots of snazzy new features.
   Users love this, stable distributions hate it, and don't update HAL,
   missing the newest hardware quirk updates. This means that new hardware
   often won't work out of the box until the next version of the distro
   is released.

So, for example, stable distro 'x' ships HAL 0.5.9 with no intention
of updating it other than for security fixes. Stable distro 'x'
does however update from hal-info-20061107 to hal-info-{date} as there
are no new features, minimal risk of breaking, and lots of chance that
more hardware that didn't work now will.

What does this mean for:

 * An end user: Not much - all the fdi files are installed in the
   same places as they used to be.
 * A distro packager: hal should depend on hal-info, of any version.
   Existing patches to the fdi files in fdi/information should be moved
   to the hal-info product.
 * Release architect: updating hal-info shouldn't break anything
   that already works or add new dependencies.
 * Developer: hal-info should be checked out in the same level
   directory as hal if you intend to use ./run-hald.sh

SCM
===

 - anonymous checkouts

   $ git clone git://git.freedesktop.org/git/hal.git

 - checkouts if you got an ssh account on fd.o (username@ is optional)

   $ git clone ssh://[username@]git.freedesktop.org/git/hal.git

 - commit to local repository

   $ git commit -a

 - push local repository to master repository at fd.o (remember most patches
   requires review at the mailing list)

   $ git push

 - pull changes from master repository at fd.o

   $ git pull

 - diff of working tree versus local repository

   $ git diff

 - diff of local repository vs. master repository at fd.o

   synchronize with upstream repo:
   $ git pull

   (possibly merge changes)

   generate the diff:
   $ git diff origin HEAD

 - influential environment variables (set these in e.g. .bash_profile)

   export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME='Your Full Name'
   export GIT_COMMITTER_NAME='Your Full Name'
   export GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL=youremail@domain.net
   export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL=youremail@domain.net

 - see also

    http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/


Committing code
===

 - Commit messages should be of the form (the five lines between the
   lines starting with ===)

=== begin example commit ===
short explanation of the commit

Longer explanation explaining exactly what's changed, whether any
external or private interfaces changed, what bugs were fixed (with bug
tracker reference if applicable) and so forth. Be concise but not too brief.
=== end example commit ===

 - Always add a brief description of the commit to the _first_ line of
   the commit and terminate by two newlines (it will work without the
   second newline, but that is not nice for the interfaces). 

 - First line (the brief description) must only be one sentence and
   must not start with a capital letter. Don't use a trailing period
   either.

 - The main description (the body) is normal prose and should use normal
   punctuation and capital letters where appropriate. Normally, for patches
   sent to a mailing list it's copied from there.

 - When committing code on behalf of others use the --author option, e.g.
   git commit -a --author "Joe Coder <joe@coder.org>"

Coding Style
===

 - Please follow the coding style already used - it's not a must, but it's
   nice to have consistency.

 - Write docs for all functions and structs and so on. We use gtkdoc format.

 - All external interfaces (network protocols, file formats, etc.)
   should have documented specifications sufficient to allow an
   alternative implementation to be written. Our implementation should
   be strict about specification compliance (should not for example
   heuristically parse a file and accept not-well-formed
   data). Avoiding heuristics is also important for security reasons;
   if it looks funny, ignore it (or exit, or disconnect).

Configuring the sources
===

To configure the HAL sources for a generic modern Linux desktop
distribution using Linux 2.6.20, one should use

--enable-console-kit --enable-acl-management --enable-docbook-docs --enable-acpi-ibm --enable-acpi-toshiba --enable-umount-helper