Re: 07/07: services: console-keymap: Deprecate.

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hi Alex,

Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès (2019-04-07 18:24 +0200) wrote:
>
> [...]
>> As you found out, this is deprecated in favor of ‘keyboard-layout’,
>> which has a couple of advantages: it’s uniform (the same config works
>> for GRUB, Linux, and Xorg), and it’s installed from the initrd, so
>> already effective when you type in your passphrase (see
>> <https://issues.guix.info/issue/34929>).
>>
>> ‘keyboard-layout’ definitely works for what you describe, Mark (see the
>> examples in the manual.)
>>
>> If you do fancy things with Linux-native keymap files, Alex, it’s
>> probably not for you.  In that case you do need
>> ‘console-keymap-service’.
>
> The fancy thing I do is simply loading my own keymap file, like this:
>
>   (console-keymap-service (local-file ".../my.map"))
>
> If I understand correctly, ‘keyboard-layout’ does not allow me to do
> this, right?

Not directly, no.

>> However, I was thinking that we probably want to steer users towards the
>> ‘keyboard-layout’ mechanism so they don’t experience the inconsistencies
>> we had before.  That’s why I deprecated ‘console-keymap-service’.  I’d
>> argue that keymap experts won’t have difficulties coming up with a
>> ‘console-keymap-service’ if they need it.
>
> Sure, it's not a problem for me to add ‘console-keymap-service’ to my
> config, I was just surprised that some feature was removed
> ("deprecating" means "removing sooner or later", right?) without
> replacing it with equivalent functionality (as I see it).

It’s deprecated in order to be removed eventually, yes.

It’s “equivalent functionality” in the sense that it deals with keyboard
layout in the console, but it’s also a different interface.

>> WDYT?
>
> Please do whatever seems appropriate to you.  I just think that keyboard
> layouts for grub, tty and X server are completely unrelated settings,
> and I don't like when such unrelated configurations are combined just to
> become more "user-friendly".

I don’t think anyone mentioned user-friendliness, though I think
user-friendliness is a good thing.  :-)

Anyway, keyboard settings have been a longstanding issue with several
open bug reports, notably about the inconsistencies one would inevitably
go through.  This change was proposed precisely to address this problem.
Debian uses ‘console-setup’ for the same reason.

Now, that does not prevent users from configuring things separately, or
using ‘loadkeys’ directly, etc.

Thanks for your feedback,
Ludo’.