<refsect1><title>DESCRIPTION</title>
<para>
udisks provides interfaces to enumerate and perform operations
- on storage devices. Any application can access the
+ on storage devices. Any application (including unprivileged
+ ones) can access the
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>udisksd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>
daemon via the name <emphasis>org.freedesktop.UDisks2</emphasis>
- on the system message bus. In addition to the D-Bus API, a library,
- <filename>libudisks2</filename> is also provided. This library
- can be used from C/C++ and any high-level language supporting
+ on the system message bus. In addition to the D-Bus API, a
+ library, <filename>libudisks2</filename> is also provided. This
+ library can be used from C/C++ and any high-level language with
<ulink url="https://live.gnome.org/GObjectIntrospection">GObjectIntrospection</ulink>
- such as Javascript, Python and so on. In addition to exposing
- the D-Bus API, the library also contains a couple of useful
- utility functions.
+ support such as Javascript and Python.
</para>
<para>
- As a system-level component, udisks is not per se concerned with
- what a desktop user interface shows the user. For GNOME see
- these <ulink
+ Except for providing a list of devices, support for udev
+ properties as well as routines used to present the devices to
+ the end user, udisks, as a system-level component, is not
+ involved with what a desktop user interface shows the user. For
+ GNOME see these <ulink
url="http://git.gnome.org/browse/gvfs/tree/monitor/udisks2/what-is-shown.txt">GVfs
notes</ulink> about what is shown in the desktop user interface
and how to influence it.
<citerefentry>
<refentrytitle>gdbus</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum>
</citerefentry>
- to interact with the D-Bus API.
+ to interact with
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>udisksd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>.
</para>
</refsect1>
application). Software on this level typically depend on a
specific (major) version of udisks and may even have support for
previous versions of udisks or alternative interfaces performing
- the same role as udisks (such as the now deprecated hal daemon).
+ the same role as udisks.
</para>
<para>
While udisks indeed provides a stable API and a clear upgrade
the operating system vendor may not even provide a packaged
version of the old version. Hence, if an application does not
want to tie itself to a specific version of the operating
- system, it should not be using udisks.
+ system, it should not use udisks.
</para>
<para>
- Viable alternatives to udisks include APIs that are guaranteed
- to be around for longer time-frames, including:
+ Viable alternatives to udisks are APIs that are guaranteed to be
+ around for longer time-frames, including:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
Many methods and operations offered by udisks requires the
calling user to be sufficiently authorized. Whether the user
is authorized is checked using <ulink
- url="http://hal.freedesktop.org/docs/polkit/polkit.8.html">polkit</ulink>
+ url="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/polkit/docs/latest/polkit.8.html">polkit</ulink>
and the administrator can configure <ulink
- url="http://hal.freedesktop.org/docs/polkit/pklocalauthority.8.html">polkit's
+ url="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/polkit/docs/latest/pklocalauthority.8.html">polkit's
local authority</ulink> (but note that the system may be
using another polkit authority implementation).
</para>