Re: Being part of a community and behaving
On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 10:01:39AM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> I find that interesting.
>
> I recall being told that, while it is technically possible to compile
> and use GNOME without systemd - specifically, without libpam-systemd and
> its backend infrastructure - doing so now loses so much functionality
> that the result is barely (if at all) worth using. (This is a
> paraphrase.)
>
> Is that not correct?
When logind was added as a dependency, it didn't depend on systemd. As
release-team we mistakingly believed that it would stay independent.
I suggested to Ian to look at the history while assuming people had the
best intentions:
- systemd: propose systemd as hard dependency
- gnome: "no"
- systemd: logind has really cool functionality fixing the stuff you
dislike about ConsoleKit
- gnome: "yes, let's get rid of ConsoleKit :-D"
- kernel: cgroups needs to change
- systemd: logind depends on systemd
- gnome (some): "oh urgh"
Now Lennart I know is very positive about systemd and wants it used
everywhere. That's taken into account. Some stuff (timedated, hostnamed,
etc) is really easy to implement independently. So I don't see any
problem relying on that. Everyone knows he wants it everywhere. That's
not what matters. When he wanted to have it everywhere, he got a no.
Then he provided stuff that is useful, this resulted in optional parts
being used. And IIRC, I think there were some warnings that logind was
not independent (unlike timedated). But never really considered anything
other than that it way a great replacement for ConsoleKit.
> However, many pieces of GNOME depend directly on PolicyKit, which can
> only use one of ConsoleKit or systemd-logind, the choice being made at
> build time.
>
> In short: if you want to make GNOME in Debian work without systemd, you
> need to make PolicyKit able to switch between both at runtime (like GDM
> does).
More important: Figure out technical details, be part of the technical
discussions, respond technically why things should or should not be
done. Be willing to do a bit of work if needed. Any change that might
impact anything I usually announce, no matter if the change came from
GNOME or not. See distributor-list archives.
E.g. the tty switching which is now in logind and used for Wayland.
Saying it should not be and leaving it at that (or e.g. voting for a GR)
is not going to change things. Just join the discussion technically,
propose a different technical solution. Be open to actually having to
implement that. If someone offered an alternative possibility upstream
then there is a possible different decision to be made.
In some messages seem to suggest to leave upstream alone. That is just
if you limit yourself to saying "do this/that". Another approach
(meaning: technical description of alternative) I'd really appreciate.
Ideally if the alternative seems feasible.
--
Regards,
Olav
Reply to: