What If .........Slack needs Systemd (Slackbuilds)
 

Please read below first before posting:

This post is meant for helping everyone that is interested in running systemd on Slackware.

THIS IS NOT A PLACE FOR FLAME WARS.

If in the future Slackware needs to switch to systemd, we have slackbuilds, unit files, etc ready for them to use.

As Everyone knows: GNOME and KDE will be switching to use Systemd.
This will be as it looks now 90% sure a hard dependency.

Because of this (for me GNOME), the dropline gnome devs started with developing of systemd on slackware.
Dropline Gnome has its own build system, so I have made Slackbuilds from the systemd parts, and I intend to extend these with packages that needs to use unit files, or as explained below rebuild.

- Udev will be soon completly integretad into systemd.
so a dozen packages that are requiring libudev.so.0 will need to be rebuild to link against the new libudev.so.1 (currently libudev.so.0 is linked to libudev.so.1 in the Slackbuild)

- ConsoleKit is currently not actively maintained. The focus has shifted to the built-in seat/user/session management of systemd called http://www.freedesktop.org/software/...d.service.html

- User sessions are registered in logind via the pam_systemd(8) PAM module. (this is why the DE's are switching to systemd).

SlackBuilds can be found at: SlackBuilds Systemd

A small howto can be found here: Systemd for Slackware

If you wish to help in making slackbuilds, improving slackbuilds, or creating documentation for it. you can reply that here, or send me an email at < bartgymnast - at - hotmail - dot - com >
You can also find me on irc.freenode.org in channel #dropline

this enables at least some real world comparisons, see what works how and so on.
would like to have more time to give it a trial right now, but this has to wait some time.
thanks for the effort

I thought the Gnome devs said they weren't going to make any hard dependencies for systemd.

they said during the time, it was requested and they would review it with each release.
For now it is still not a hard dependency.
However without systemd, you need to patch a lot of packages to get all functionality.

And some goes for Kwin (KDE), read Alienbob's blog post http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-...kware-current/
I replied in a post later that my interpretation on this was wrong. and that KDE is thinking about maybe using systemd, but nothing has been decided.

My planning for the next packages are:

util-linux
bluez
udisks
upower
udisks2
system-config-printer
lvm2
libatasmart
wayland
mesa
glib2
fontconfig
gobject-introspection
polkit - is now available
pango
gdk-pixbuf2
gtk+3
NetworkManager
openssh - is now available

No, you use descriptive thread titles, please! Not "What If ........"

done

Please do not give your own interpretation to these issues and make it appear those are the actual opinions of others.
Where do you get the "Everyone knows: ... KDE will be switching to use Systemd" and "it looks now 90% sure a hard dependency" from?
If you read my post, and click through to the article by Martin Graesslin, you will notice that he only talks about "may be" and "we do not yet depend on systemd and have no concrete plans to depend on it. It’s just that it looks like the Wayland system compositor will use systemd".
And Wayland will be only one of the supported compositors, next to the X.Org compositor.

Eric

I sincerely hope kwin doesn't force Systemd upon users. At the very least, kwin is not needed to run kde. Either way, despite not being a great fan of Systemd, i acknowledge your efforts in creating Slackbuids bartgymnast. I won't test them, but thank you for sharing.

EDIT:

I haven't been participating in the Gnu/Linux community for a few months. I was looking forward to Wayland, i really hope it doesn't force Systemd on us.

I know when I compiled gala (WM) a few days ago, I had to do some creative versioning to get away from having systemd as a dependency. It was possible, but I had to use some earlier versions on some libraries.

Also, I was still unhappy with some of the things I had to install.

Alien,
For Gnome it looks 90% to become a hard dependency, I should have stated that better.

and indeed, kwin is a maybe, but not yet (sorry for stating this wrong)
and yes it looks indeed that the wayland compositer will use systemd.

Apart from that, comments on the SlackBuilds and etc. are welcome

Wayland itself has in no way a dependency on systemd. It is up to the developers of WMs/DEs if they want their compositors (or other parts of the DE) to be dependent on systemd.

@bartgymnast: Thanks for those SlackBuilds, I will definitely have a look at that once I have a little bit more time.

Indeed, Wayland has absolutely no dependencies on systemd. However, some DE's are considering requiring systemd for Wayland use because Wayland is lacking certain features that X had, such as login facilities (systemd has logind, thus the theoretical dependency). People seem to think KWin will require systemd because KWin's maintainer is a fan of systemd. To be perfectly fair, since Wayland doesn't have good (any) login facilites, systemd's logind is a tempting option. But he has never stated (that I can find) that KWin will require systemd at any point in the future.

Concerns over GNOME are, perhaps, a little more justified, because they intend to move to systemd in the future. They don't just mean logind, either - they already use systemd for power management.

I would not be worried about KDE suddenly dumping every non-systemd distro. Right now, they are kinda maybe considering using systemd with Wayland in the future perhaps. They have said nothing about X, and I don't think X is moving for a while yet. Wayland may be ready and stable, but it hasn't 'arrived'.

In the end, I don't care that much about what init I use. If Pat decides in the future that systemd's the way to go, then I'll follow. If not, then not.

If I'm not mistaken the hardlinked systemd dependency in Gnome can actually be deactivated. I think DropLine does this.

Reaper, what do you mean?

Dropline is having testing with systemd yes. is it required as hard dep of gnome, NO (atleast not yet)
This post/topic is not about that. Its for having slackbuilds with systemd.
So if people are interested to try it out, they can (without installing Dropline Gnome)

if and let me repeat, if slack needs to/or is going to switch to use systemd.
there are slackbuilds ready that the dev team could use (could, they dont need to).

Also people that have been testing this will be more familiar with how things work.

One does not simply "need" systemd.