Configurable GDM themes for derivated distros

[Héctor Rivas Gándara]

Hi,

We are working on a distro based on ubuntu. We need to change all the 
workart from several packages. Some of them are easy to customize 
(using gconf, debconf, alternatives, etc...), but others, like gdm, 
must be modified by patching the source (using simple-patchsys) just to 
change a pair of lines in the configuration file.

The same issue happens for changing the splash and the default user 
background coded in the packages libgnome2-common and gnome-session.

I think that is too much effort building and maintaining such a big 
package as gdm in a derived distro, and it's difficult to keep all this 
packages updated, especially with dapper. I wonder if there is another 
way to change the default theme for GDM. If there isn't, I suggest to 
add a mechanism to change it without changes in  the original package:
	- Add a debconf template to tune it using debconf
	- Add something like gdmconf-gen that builds the gdm.conf file from a 
gdm.conf.d
	- Use update-alternatives and set a "default name" theme in the 
gdm.conf

I could provide a package that uses tricks and patches to modify the 
configuration to set my themes, but the debian-policy doesn't recomends 
that.

I think that there should exists a generic solution to modify artwork 
without modify big and important packages. Is there any proposal about 
this?

--
Regards
Héctor Rivas