3 ms·

What's interesting here isn't a strict dependency on systemd, but dependencies on some APIs it provides. Given the ability and existence of things which impleme

What's interesting here isn't a strict dependency on systemd, but dependencies on some APIs it provides. Given the ability and existence of things which implement those APIs outside of systemd, it's worth considering that the APIs themselves should be the focus. Perhaps they should be spun out of systemd itself. It seems sensible to that gnome would want to move to a better API which is almost defacto a standard these days anyways. Versioning the API and allowing more folks outside of the systemd organization to participate in its continued evolution should be the focus imo.

adrian_b 1y ago
The problem is that those APIs are not well documented, so reading the convolute source code may be the only documentation in some cases. Perhaps there is some documentation, but it is well hidden. Just these days, after being hit by the fact that the Xorg server has become dependent on systemd, I have begun to search for what elogind is really doing to simulate the login services of systemd. I have not found any easy way to discover that, except by reading the source code, which is not simple at all. I would not care if GNOME or any other package would add systemd dependencies, but these were accompanied by a document describing precisely the protocols or APIs they use for accessing systemd services, so that it would be easy to write alternative implementations. The reality is that no such documentation is provided, so the only way to avoid systemd is to become an expert in its internals. This is why I hate when such new dependencies are added.
- blucaz 1y ago
  > The reality is that no such documentation is provided, so the only way to avoid systemd is to become an expert in its internals. The blog post subject of the thread literally links to the documentation. If you can't even be bothered clicking on the provided links, what are you even doing commenting on such a thread. But by all means, don't let facts get in the way of a good baseless rant.

adrian_b 1y ago

The problem is that those APIs are not well documented, so reading the convolute source code may be the only documentation in some cases. Perhaps there is some documentation, but it is well hidden. Just these days, after being hit by the fact that the Xorg server has become dependent on systemd, I have begun to search for what elogind is really doing to simulate the login services of systemd. I have not found any easy way to discover that, except by reading the source code, which is not simple at all. I would not care if GNOME or any other package would add systemd dependencies, but these were accompanied by a document describing precisely the protocols or APIs they use for accessing systemd services, so that it would be easy to write alternative implementations. The reality is that no such documentation is provided, so the only way to avoid systemd is to become an expert in its internals. This is why I hate when such new dependencies are added.

blucaz 1y ago
> The reality is that no such documentation is provided, so the only way to avoid systemd is to become an expert in its internals. The blog post subject of the thread literally links to the documentation. If you can't even be bothered clicking on the provided links, what are you even doing commenting on such a thread. But by all means, don't let facts get in the way of a good baseless rant.