[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#727708: Bits from linux.conf.au

[Yves-Alexis Perez]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 11:19:38AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 08:03:50PM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> > Le mardi 14 janvier 2014 à 11:31 -0700, Bdale Garbee a écrit :
> > > > If dependencies like "installing GNOME enforces systemd as init system"
> > > > would be legal, then after a few more such dependencies it would turn
> > > > out that systemd will be the only option available for virtually all 
> > > > users - and that all the hassle of supporting multiple init systems
> > > > was a waste of effort.
> 
> > > Please be careful about stacking assumptions like this.  Equating GNOME
> > > to "virtually all users" completely ignores the vast number of Debian
> > > instances on servers, virtual machines, and embedded systems.  And even
> > > if you only think about client systems, in my own circle of friends
> > > there's a lot more XFCE4 than GNOME these days.
> 
> > As their maintainers have stated, Xfce4 and KDE are most likely going to
> > require systemd soon.
> 
> There has been no such statement from the XFCE maintainers in this
> discussion.

If you're really interested in the opinion of Xfce maintainers, it might
be wise to add us to CC:. I try to look at the bug from time to time,
but there's simply too much mails and it's running for too long, I just
can't follow.

I've added the pkg-xfce mailing list for that subthread, please keep
things Xfce-related and drop the pkg-xfce list when needed.

About systemd. Right now, Xfce in unstable doesn't have any systemd
specific support. Actually, Xfce is pretty much unrelated to the init
system.

What Xfce uses right now is actually the PolicyKit/ConsoleKit, in order to manage:

- power events in xfce4-power-manager (lid switch, power button)
- power actions in xfce4-power-manager and xfce4-session (suspend,
  hibernate, shutdown/reboot), using upower
- volume management (USB keys etc.) in Thunar and xfdesktop4, through
  gvfs and udisks

*Right now*, it's perfectly possible to use Xfce without consolekit
installed, but you will lose the above features (for shutdown and reboot
there's actually a shutdown helper which can be run through sudo).

Now, as far as I understand it, PolicyKit/ConsoleKit are unmaintained,
and the recommended alternative is to use logind. That means in the
future, it's likely that upstream Xfce will have to move away from
consolekit. That's not something they really like, considering the
support was added not so long ago, but there's not much choice, unless
someone wants to maintain consolekit in the long run. And it seems that
the only choice right now is to go with logind.

No patch have already been merged for that, but there are patches for
various components (xfce4-power-manager and xfce4-session mostly, since
for Thunar it's actually done in gvfs and/or udisks, so we won't have a
choice anyway). 

Those patches have mostly been contributed by distros who already use
systemd/logind and have dropped consolekit, so they want the nice
features back and a consistent environment. Right now I've refrained to
integrate and upload them because I'm still waiting for the tech-ctte to
decide on the issue.

Because in the end (as I guess it's been already said multiple times on
this bug), even though the stuff we'll most likely require in the future
is in logind, it seems that there'll be no way to use it without systemd
post-204 (but I might be wrong). And I have no idea what's the Xubuntu
plan.

TL;DR

 it's most likely Xfce upstream will move from consolekit to logind (and
thus systemd) at one point. Not because they really like it, but because
indeed everyone else is moving to it, and there's simply not enough
manpower to rebuild the whole freedesktop.org stack. I hope (and some
people in the Xfce developers community too) it won't be a hard
dependency, and I guess it's likely that a non-logind Xfce will continue
to work the same as a non-consolekit Xfce right now.

Regards,
-- 
Yves-Alexis