Debian Init System Discussion Is Still Unsettled

[gens]

I don't think the question is whether they want to have packages that depend on systemd, because that's a no-win argument given that Gnome and KDE are both looking at increasing integration with systemd as a user-session manager. It's about how they deal with it, and what level of deterioration is acceptable if systemd isn't PID1, what kind of fallback options are available.

gnome has shown tendencies to have hard dependencies on systemd (i'd call that kind of loss of functionality to be too much to call optional)
but i see kde working fine without systemd

gnome has been removed from slackware a long time ago as it was hard to maintain, and i don't believe it got easier with gnome3


i though linux is about choice

[Delgarde]

The future development stack for Linux is systemd, kdbus, cgroups, and Wayland. The legacy stack consisting of X, sysvinit/Upstart (and perhaps d-bus) will slowly bit-rot away.

There simply isn't any developer impetus to maintain the legacy stack. A perfect example is ConsoleKit; even though it is essential for having any decent desktop experience, it has bit-rotted away for +1? year. Despite numerous warnings (on the Debian devel list too), no developer has even forked ConsoleKit to at least try to maintain it.

People may not like systemd, but they sure aren't getting up from the couch to actually develop any alternative to it, or pathetically enough, even maintain existing alternatives.

Yes, that's my feeling too. Putting aside the merits of some of those new solutions, the fact is that the decisions are being made by the people who are actually doing the work. Systemd isn't spreading due to some Lennart conspiracy - it's spreading because people are looking at the work he and others have done, and thought "that's exactly what we need". Both Gnome and KDE are looking at using systemd as some kind of user session manager, because doing so solves problems for them - they need something *like* systemd, so they're going to use it.

And if it means the software becomes less portable - doesn't work on non-Linux, doesn't work on Linux without systemd - well, that's not their problem. They're happy using Linux and systemd because it makes things easier for them, and if other people don't like that, those other people can try solving problems for a change instead of just complaining about what the developers are doing.

It is all hot air rants against Lennart Poettering, and no work at all.

And I see one of the anti-Lennart trolls has shown up spamming the Debian debate with his rants. Regardless of which side of the fence they stand on, I doubt any of the technical committee are impressed by that sort of behaviour.... it'd be nice if one of the Upstart-backers like Ian or Steve would come out and tell the troll what he can do with his tiresome conspiracy theories...

[GreatEmerald]

And now Adrian Bunk managed to annoy everyone by badgering Josselin Mouette: https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte.../msg00561.html
Good times. I'm thinking that Michael's suggestion to not forget popcorn and/or beer while reading the mailing list is not that bad an idea after all.

[Delgarde]

gnome has shown tendencies to have hard dependencies on systemd (i'd call that kind of loss of functionality to be too much to call optional)
but i see kde working fine without systemd

For now, yes. But give it a year or so, and things might look different... several KDE developers have expressed interest in what Gnome is doing with systemd, because as a desktop, they have exactly the same problems. I believe they already have some support for logind, and at least one of them was speculating on the systemd user-session aspect recently (can't remember where I saw it... possibly a G+ post linked off this Debian discussion?)

Edit: Here was one of the discussions I was thinking of...

https://plus.google.com/+MartinGr%C3%A4%C3%9Flin/posts/GMtZrNCeaLD

[Delgarde]

And now Adrian Bunk managed to annoy everyone by badgering Josselin Mouette: https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte.../msg00561.html
Good times. I'm thinking that Michael's suggestion to not forget popcorn and/or beer while reading the mailing list is not that bad an idea after all.

I think one of the biggest issues here is over who is expected to do the work, if the decision requires it. A number of the committee members are taking the stance that (e.g) if Upstart is chosen, then either the Debian Gnome maintainers or Gnome upstream have some obligation to do the work to remove the systemd dependencies from Gnome, or at least, to find workarounds for stuff that doesn't work under non-systemd init. Unsurprisingly, there's some pushback against taking that sort of attitude towards volunteers.

[eidolon]

Last I heard, ChromeOS uses some ancient version of Upstart that isn't even supported by Canonical any more. The Upstart developers asked people to ignore it because the ChromeOS version is not representative of Upstart as a whole.

Upstart 0.6.3-11 circa Ubuntu 9.10, isn't it?

[Akka]

For now, yes. But give it a year or so, and things might look different... several KDE developers have expressed interest in what Gnome is doing with systemd, because as a desktop, they have exactly the same problems. I believe they already have some support for logind, and at least one of them was speculating on the systemd user-session aspect recently (can't remember where I saw it... possibly a G+ post linked off this Debian discussion?)

Edit: Here was one of the discussions I was thinking of...

https://plus.google.com/+MartinGr%C3...ts/GMtZrNCeaLD

I'm unsure what you meen with some support for logind. But I used kde when arch removed consolkit and instead pushed logind as (I think) first distro., and KDE still worked fine. So I suppose they had some support already at that time.

[Akka]

Upstart 0.6.3-11 circa Ubuntu 9.10, isn't it?

As I understands it they think they have pretty simple needs and this old version is good enough. So at the moment, its not worth the needed work to switch to a newer version or another pid1.

[GreatEmerald]

I think one of the biggest issues here is over who is expected to do the work, if the decision requires it. A number of the committee members are taking the stance that (e.g) if Upstart is chosen, then either the Debian Gnome maintainers or Gnome upstream have some obligation to do the work to remove the systemd dependencies from Gnome, or at least, to find workarounds for stuff that doesn't work under non-systemd init. Unsurprisingly, there's some pushback against taking that sort of attitude towards volunteers.

Yea. The GNOME upstream by far has no such obligation, since it's their project and they can do with it what they wish (especially sine systemd integration is the logical thing to do in their case, other options are simply inadequate). Debian could remove GNOME from the archive, but that would most likely cause major fallout, and I don't think Debian developers want that. Then the only way out would be to force Debian GNOME maintainers to do the job, but they aren't very enthused about it, either (and why would they; they have stated their opinion on the list, and they are wholly supportive of GNOME's general direction, and don't feel like maintaining legacy code that nobody else cares about).

Mind you, I don't see most of the TC participating in this discussion in particular. The general sentiment seems to be "if someone provides a patch that makes it work under non-default inits, accept the patch", but it doesn't force the maintainers to write the patch in question. Also, forcing the maintainers to do anything is unimplementable to begin with, unless there is a 3:1 majority vote to change the rules.

Now if the original vote had proceeded as planned, they could have not had to worry about such a thing in the first place. If they decide for systemd as the default init, this problem becomes largely low-priority, because GNOME can proceed as planned, and then down the road they can think about how to best handle Upstart maintenance so that GNOME could start under it as well (if anyone cares about that ? whether or not they do depends on kFreeBSD, too, since they may or may not want to adopt Upstart and may or may not want to use GNOME). Only if Upstart wins does this because a high-priority issue. Without voting on the system first, it's just doesn't make much sense to think about it.

Also, I recall someone mentioning that if there was a program ported from OS X to Linux and it depended on OS X functionality, the developer would have to make the program free of those API dependencies rather than require Debian to implement them (making it as a parallel to the GNOME situation). Which I find hilarious, because that's not true even in such a parallel ? the developer has full rights to have the program depend on an OS X emulation layer (I forget how it's called) and require Debian to include the layer, or otherwise the program wouldn't be able to run. It's a perfectly valid dependency. Not ideal to have it, but it's not dependency for the sake of dependency, either.

[GreatEmerald]

I'm unsure what you meen with some support for logind. But I used kde when arch removed consolkit and instead pushed logind as (I think) first distro., and KDE still worked fine. So I suppose they had some support already at that time.

Well, KDE now uses the startkde shell script to, well, start the KDE environment, and startkde is a complicated, old, unreliable minefield of a script, and something that systemd could do much better with its user sessions in a reliable, consistent and easily debuggable manner. Similar thing with KDM, it's a huge piece of old code that is extremely difficult to debug and change, and it seems that there aren't any people left who actually know how the thing works to begin with (those who try to figure it out seem to get a headache). So KDE plans to get rid of both as soon as they can, and replace them with superior alternatives (for KDM, they were thinking of SDDM or LightDM, probably the former). Probably in time for KF5 launch.