Re: [T(A)ILS-dev] GSoC application: tails-greeter

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Autore: intrigeri
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To: M
CC: tech, Tor Assistants, The T\(A\)ILS public development discussion list
Oggetto: Re: [T(A)ILS-dev] GSoC application: tails-greeter
Hi,

> That's why I think vala is preferred.


Fair enough :)

> I doubt that significant changes will be required but I do not have
> solid argument to back this claim up until I have custom build env.
> up and running.


Ok.

>> Anyway, you need to take into account that it would be much, much,
>> much better if you could implement tails-greeter in a way that does
>> *not* force us to ship a modified gdm3 package.


> I do not see how this could be done regardless of programming
> language: gdm-simple-greeter is not in separate .deb so replacing
> it with tails-greeter will force us to rebuild gdm .deb, isn't it?


As (scarsely) mentionned in our todo item [0], "it should be mostly
about hacking autostart files."

[0] https://tails.boum.org/todo/boot_menu/

Let me expand a bit on this topic. On a Debian Squeeze system, GDM3
runs a custom GNOME session with a bunch of special apps in it. Those
apps have .desktop files shipped in the
/usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/ directory.

This is where one can find gdm-simple-greeter.desktop.

$ grep '^Exec' gdm-simple-greeter.desktop
Exec=/usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-simple-greeter

Our initial guess, before submitting this project idea to Tor's
Volunteer page, was that one could replace gdm-simple-greeter with
another greeter by:

  1. Having gdm-simple-greeter.desktop installed by the gdm3 to
     another place than this autostart directory; e.g. see the
     dpkg-divert(8) mechanism.
  2. Having another (tails-greeter) package ship its own .desktop file
     in the abovementionned autostart directory.


I've not tested any of it, but seems like it should work without
modifying the gdm3 package, doesn't it?

Bye,
--
intrigeri <intrigeri@???>
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