Re: systemd as external dependency

[Frederic Peters <fpeters gnome org>]

Lennart Poettering wrote:

> I'd like to propose systemd (GPL2+,
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd) as blessed external
> dependency for GNOME 3.2. 

There actually isn't a module proposal period anymore.  We are using
feature or design proposals now.  But the process for external
dependencies was different anyway.

Recently I was trying to categorise our 2.x external dependencies,
thinking about the way to handle this for 3.x, and came with three
levels:

** 1st level **

  Established, stable, system modules, they have been in
  place for a long time, with stable API and ABI, and they exist in
  sufficient versions in the distributions commonly used by GNOME
  hackers, even in older but still used versions (Fedora 13 for
  example).

  Examples : libxml2, libpng, dbus...

  Proposed guideline : mentioned as dependencies with a base version,
  not built by default by jhbuild.

  Rationale : we want to reduce the number of modules that need to be
  built to start developing on GNOME.


** 2nd level **

  Modules developed outside GNOME, with little attention to our
  schedule, but with an active development, and where we want to track
  recent code.

  Examples : mozilla (js-185 nowadays), poppler.

  Proposed guideline : built from tarballs, version bumps whenever a
  module need a new version.

  Rationale : we need recent code, but we do not want to arrive on a
  release days with modules failing to build because they require some
  code only available in $DVCS.


** 3rd level **

  Modules developed outside GNOME, with attention to our schedule
  (i.e. we can ask for a tarball and get it in two days).

  Examples : webkitgtk, polkit.

  Proposed guideline : treated like any other GNOME module, built from
  latest git.

  Rationale : we do not need to put extra burden on modules that are
  close to us.


At which level would you see systemd integrated, now, and in the
future?

Also you are speaking about (D-Bus) interfaces, and it is already
envisioned to have them implemented by other components, should we
talk about D-Bus interfaces that we expect to be available for GNOME,
instead of saying "systemd"?

Something else is the ability to run development GNOME, the most
common tool those days is jhbuild, which was created way before D-Bus,
and it's not always straightforward to get it working with D-Bus
services, do you believe it will be possible to have systemd built and
useful from jhbuild, or do you expect systemd will have to come from
the distribution?



        Fred