Bug#727708: init system discussion status
On Sun, 2014-01-05 at 02:18 +0000, Dimitri John Ledkov wrote:
> On 5 January 2014 01:46, Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:
> > Dimitri John Ledkov <xnox@debian.org> writes:
> >
> >> Imho that's a gross overstatement. Over more than a year, an Ubuntu
> >> GNOME team was established and became official ubuntu flavour with so
> >> goal and purpose of shipping GNOME3 in it's full glory. If distro watch
> >> is any indication they are fast growing ubuntu flavour, outpacing the
> >> more established ones like e.g. Xubuntu. The demand for such flavour is
> >> growing, with highly positive reviews from critics and general
> >> public. There is a group of volunteers who contribute to making it
> >> work. I've personally used it, and it's quite wonderful and capable
> >> desktop environment. I think there is some degree of heresy to claim
> >> that GNOME3 is only supported with systemd-init pid1. That was the case
> >> intermittently, until majority of pid1 checks were replaced by more
> >> correct ones.
> >
> > Insofar as this is evidence that it's possible to make GNOME work with
> > option 2 (run logind without systemd), this is certainly valid
> > information, but I think this is information that we already have. As I
> > said in my original writeup, I believe the main challenge with option 2
> > for jessie is not in figuring out *how* to do the work, but in identifying
> > *who* is going to do the work. (Beyond jessie, this will require ongoing
> > resources to maintain if it's not purely a transitional issue, but that's
> > a somewhat separate discussion.) And I'll note that Sjoerd said exactly
> > the same thing.
> >
> > Saying that it's easy is fine, particularly if you have details as to why
> > it's easy. What we're not going to do is say that therefore the existing
> > GNOME maintainers in Debian must do it. That is not how we work as a
> > project, and that is not how we're going to work as a project. If they
> > don't want to do the work, no one is going to force them to do it.
> >
> > Please instead note Steve's comments on maintaining logind as a separate
> > package, which is the productive way forward and is a way to get to the
> > second solution in my original message. Volunteering to do the work and
> > finding a way to do it in a minimally intrusive fashion is the way to show
> > that it's straightforward.
> >
>
> I see thanks. I guess the only relevant addition, is that there is a
> pool of self-selected developers that are working on the similar type
> of integration issues: GNOME3 with logind without systemd-init. The
> Ubuntu GNOME team (packaging team is 18 people at the moment, there
> are more in users/qa/documentation teams ~250+ people)
> https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-gnome-packaging
I think as the Debian gnome team we've got a pretty good working
relationship with some developers in that team, (with some developers
even contributing directly to both teams! Which is great). So I'm well
aware of its existance.
Maybe just to clarify a bit more, _most_ of my statement was about the
case where we would _not_ have systemd-logind available at all unless
the default init system is PID 1. If it is available in some form it's a
quite different story from an integration point of view, which Ubuntu
and the Ubuntu gnome team prove. That's why i started my earlier reply
in this thread by saying that it boils down to whether we can rely on
systemd-logind being available :)
However there is a second important difference here, which i think is
worth highlighting. In the Ubuntu Gnome team, the system configuration
that team supports may not be what upstream Gnome supports but it is the
default Ubuntu configuration which is what all "Ubuntu Gnome" users
actually use. So that team can focus on polishing purely that one setup.
In this case the question is not about supporting Debians defaults
configuration, but _additionally_ supporting a fallback configuration
which hopefully only a very very small amount of users are forced to
use. In the case logind can be assumed, I'm reasonably confident we can
provide an at least somewhat functionally Gnome 3 for these users.
However, we most likely wouldn't go to the effort of making it fully
functional simply because it's both a corner case and missing someone
willing to do that job & test it & maintain it.
--
Sjoerd Simons <sjoerd@debian.org>
Reply to: