Apparently, though unproven, at 23:06 on Wednesday 27 October 2010, Harry
Putnam did opine thusly:
> I've been off the list a good while and wondered if there is some kind
> of guide to scrap hal.
>
> I understand it is being done away with upstream and will probably
> require some changes on users part.
>
> I'm also guessing there is some kind of replacement that I need to
> learn about if it effects my longtime reliance on xorg.conf to keep
> using my huge desktops I like to use. For yrs I've
> used.
>
> Subsection "Display"
> Depth 24
> Modes "1280x1024" #"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
> Virtual 2048 1536
> ViewPort 0 0
> EndSubsection
> EndSection
>
> in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> To get a 2048x1536 desktop to flop around on.
>
> I've never seen or heard of a way to get that without using xorg.conf.
>
> Other things, I noticed was the onetime I did try to dump hal I ended
> up with no mouse or keyboard and fiddled with that a couple days,
> finally going back to hal.
>
> That has been probably a yr or more ago now.
>
> Back to the point: Can anyone provide some URLS that will help me
> form a battle plan or even better a brief outline of (generally) how
> to proceed with more or less painlessly dumping hal?
It should all just work automagically with no real effort from you.
However, you cannot just unmerge hal and expect stuff to work, you might still
need it, as in:
$ emerge -pv --depclean hal
Calculating dependencies... done!
sys-apps/hal-0.5.14-r3 pulled in by:
app-cdr/k3b-2.0.1
app-emulation/virtualbox-ose-3.2.10
app-misc/hal-info-20091130
dev-libs/e_dbus-9999
kde-base/solid-4.5.2
media-gfx/gimp-2.6.10
media-libs/libgphoto2-2.4.9
Recent xorg-server (i.e. 1.9.1 do not have hal in USE anymore. For earlier
versions, you may still need to set USE=-hal udev for xorg-server in
package.use. Then rebuild xorg-server. If you are *updating* xorg-server while
doing this, then you might need to rebuild mesa and all the drivers as usual
for an xorg update.
As for xorg.conf. It's not quite true that you don't need an xorg.conf - this
is still needed to define Screens and Devices if you have more than just one
video adapter at native resolution. The part you don't need without hal is the
Input section.
Once you have rebuilt xorg-server and made sure you run a recent udev plus
evdev in the kernel, comment out ALL Input sections in xorg.conf and all
references to them. Restart X.
It should all JustWork(tm). In the rare event it doesn't, post back with logs
etc and we'll take it from there.
--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
