On 10 October 2014 10:27, Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:

Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> writes:

> What does Gnome do that is so hard to port to non-systemd?

IIRC, at least initially, the feature that had a hard requirement on
systemd was serving multiple independent, concurrent user sessions
(keyboard/video/mouse) from a single workstation.

My understanding is it isn't so much "hard", but somebody has to write the interfaces to work without systemd.

I believe this is the point of the systemd-shim package in Debian:

https://packages.debian.org/sid/systemd-shim

Sometimes people have a misconception that this is part of systemd due to the name; it isn't. It is the reimplementation of the interfaces systemd provides without using systemd.

In the past, IIRC, it has suffered from neglect; I assume it is ok now though (I don't care, I intend to use systemd).

My understanding is when people have complained that package XYZ requires systemd, it is often because systemd-shim needs more work - e.g. it doesn't implement all the required interfaces.

--
Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au>