Re: systemd effectively mandatory now due to GNOME
Russ Allbery wrote:
> Christoph Anton Mitterer <calestyo@scientia.net> writes:
> > In sid, gnome-settings-daemon depends now on systemd.
>
> I'm missing a key bit of context here. Does gnome-settings-daemon just
> require that systemd be installed? Or does it require that the init
> system be systemd?
>
> The systemd package itself can be installed without changing init systems,
> so it's possible that gnome-settings-daemon just needs the non-init parts
> of this and one can install systemd for those bits and then go on with
> one's life without changing init systems. However, I don't know if
> systemd installed this way then starts its various non-init services.
>
> This seems like a fairly critical question, since if all that is required
> is for the systemd package to be installed (but without a change in the
> init system), this is all a tempest in a teapot.
There are multiple distinct APIs GNOME needs. Things like power
management may not work without systemd as init, but I'm not really
sure. However, the most important part is logind. It probably mostly
works without systemd as init with the current v204 systemd packages,
but once the package is updated to a newer version it WILL NOT work
without systemd as init due to cgroup management changes. And as
discussed elsewhere in this thread, it does not appear realistic to keep
it working. If someone wants to create a logind for systems not using
systemd as init, that would need to be a separate package (maintained by
people other than the systemd maintainers), perhaps created by forking
logind from old systemd versions.
GNOME can run without logind. However, some parts that are considered
core functionality will not work.
This page has some information about the dependency situation (perhaps
someone could give a better one now, I haven't really followed GNOME):
http://blogs.gnome.org/ovitters/2013/09/25/gnome-and-logindsystemd-thoughts/
Reply to: