GDM 3.4 in wheezy

[Josselin Mouette]

[Forget the previous email, my fingers slipped.]

Hi,

as already explained by Jordi, there’s one big remaining bit for GNOME
in wheezy: GDM. Currently it is stuck at version 3.0 (mostly because I
didn’t have enough time to work on it), and version 3.4 should be
hopefully ready for sid within a week or two. 

Upstream changes include: 
      * dropping GConf (yay) 
      * multi-stack: this is a very weird feature that enables several
        PAM conversations at once, to deal with smartcard and/or
        fingerprint authentication. I think it was done this way because
        Red Hat doesn’t have our PAM update mechanism, but the part
        where the UI looks different depending on the PAM modules you
        are using would still be interesting. Currently it is disabled,
        especially since I didn’t have any input from the Debian PAM
        maintainer despite asking several times. 
      * The startup process has been simplified more, and it fixes some
        bugs that happen with the new a11y system and the disappearance
        of gnome-power-manager. This part must be backported if we don’t
        update. 
      * The login manager can use gnome-shell in order to look closer to
        the desktop. This feature is disabled by default but can be
        enabled by the sysadmin. 
      * Multi-seat support, using systemd. Currently it is disabled too,
        but if someone has the hardware to test it, this could be
        enabled during the freeze. The fallback code when systemd is not
        running is the code without multi-seat.

Debian changes include:
      * Some cleanup in the startup scripts (GSettings / GConf),
        allowing for a faster boot and (more importantly) handling
        upgrades in GSettings schemas gracefully. This requires the
        upstream upgrade. 
      * A few bugs fixed, that can can be backported.

Why we should do it (in reverse order of importance):
     1. No more GConf, better startup scripts. 
     2. Longer upstream support for 3.4. 
     3. Optional gnome-shell support. 
     4. Multi-seat support (if we get it to work later).

Thanks for considering,
-- 
 .''`.      Josselin Mouette
: :' :
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