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It appears they have marked the Logind API as being stable because it is intended to be used by the display server and by the DEs. I don't have any secret infor

It appears they have marked the Logind API as being stable because it is intended to be used by the display server and by the DEs. I don't have any secret information here, I just saw this chart on their website. https://systemd.io/PORTABILITY_AND_STABILITY/ https://systemd.io/PORTABILITY_AND_STABILITY/ About BSD and non-systemd systems: I actually think it is possible for there to be better compatibility here eventually if someone builds more shims. BSD using Mesa for example is a really good thing for everyone. However FreeBSD and Linux have both refused to budge for quite a long time on various things and cgroups seems to have been the final nail in the coffin for any kind of expectation of modern cross-platform tooling. Everything now is container this, container that. The only non-systemd init that hasn't dragged their feet on this has been OpenRC, and even they still would not make any effort to be systemd-compatible because of objections over other things. So what is the solution here? Do you see how hard it even is to get people to run something like elogind on top of another init with another cgroup implementation? I don't blame the systemd developers for not bothering with that. It is not feasible to expect them to maintain everyone else's init as well as their own. I checked the systemd contribution graph and it seems they have a large number of smaller contributions from outside developers, so the data does not really support your assertion about it not being worth it. https://github.com/systemd/systemd/graphs/contributors https://github.com/systemd/systemd/graphs/contributors Also, just going by the data, the repos for KDE (collectively) and FreeBSD (a monorepo, like systemd) are much, much bigger, just as tightly-coupled if not moreso, and get a lot more activity than the repo for systemd. It seems strange that you would pick those projects to contribute to.

lmm 6y ago
> The only non-systemd init that hasn't dragged their feet on this has been OpenRC, and even they still would not make any effort to be systemd-compatible because of objections over other things. So what is the solution here? You either hammer out a common interface with compromises from both sides, or you implement the parts you want as progressive enhancement from a lowest-common-denominator baseline. It's not easy, it's not glamourous, but it's the right way to do it. Look at how e.g. web standards stuff happens when there's disagreement between different browser makers. > Also, just going by the data, the repos for KDE (collectively) and FreeBSD (a monorepo, like systemd) are much, much bigger, just as tightly-coupled if not moreso, and get a lot more activity than the repo for systemd. It seems strange that you would pick those projects to contribute to. I'd disagree with the idea that KDE is more tightly coupled; in my (limited) experience it's very cleanly factored and it's clear where the interface boundaries lie. It's a big project but if you want to fork and patch one part of it you can do that. FreeBSD is theoretically more tightly coupled than GNU/Linux, but in practice I've found a lot less of the kind of interface churn that you see in Linux. Linux went through two or three rounds of different audio APIs where on FreeBSD you still just use OSS. I've lost count of how many times the way you do network config on Linux changed - I genuinely can't set up a network on Linux any more - whereas in FreeBSD it's all just ifconfig. Linux forced a quick migration to HAL followed by an equally quick deprecation in favour of udev; FreeBSD is still using HAL. There's just so much more commitment to stable interfaces, both in theory - a deprecation cycle for even the kernel ABI - and in practical experience. Or maybe it's just that the project doesn't have enough manpower to churn as much as Linux does, but either way the end result is that I can patch my system and expect my patch to keep working.

lmm 6y ago

> The only non-systemd init that hasn't dragged their feet on this has been OpenRC, and even they still would not make any effort to be systemd-compatible because of objections over other things. So what is the solution here? You either hammer out a common interface with compromises from both sides, or you implement the parts you want as progressive enhancement from a lowest-common-denominator baseline. It's not easy, it's not glamourous, but it's the right way to do it. Look at how e.g. web standards stuff happens when there's disagreement between different browser makers. > Also, just going by the data, the repos for KDE (collectively) and FreeBSD (a monorepo, like systemd) are much, much bigger, just as tightly-coupled if not moreso, and get a lot more activity than the repo for systemd. It seems strange that you would pick those projects to contribute to. I'd disagree with the idea that KDE is more tightly coupled; in my (limited) experience it's very cleanly factored and it's clear where the interface boundaries lie. It's a big project but if you want to fork and patch one part of it you can do that. FreeBSD is theoretically more tightly coupled than GNU/Linux, but in practice I've found a lot less of the kind of interface churn that you see in Linux. Linux went through two or three rounds of different audio APIs where on FreeBSD you still just use OSS. I've lost count of how many times the way you do network config on Linux changed - I genuinely can't set up a network on Linux any more - whereas in FreeBSD it's all just ifconfig. Linux forced a quick migration to HAL followed by an equally quick deprecation in favour of udev; FreeBSD is still using HAL. There's just so much more commitment to stable interfaces, both in theory - a deprecation cycle for even the kernel ABI - and in practical experience. Or maybe it's just that the project doesn't have enough manpower to churn as much as Linux does, but either way the end result is that I can patch my system and expect my patch to keep working.