[arch-general] ConsoleKit replaced by systemd

[Ray Kohler]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 1:23 PM, Karol Babioch <karol at babioch.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm about to set up a new machine and want to make use of systemd.
> Currently I'm reading up on the topic as systemd changes quite a lot of
> things.
>
> Just recently I've realized that ConsoleKit is not maintained actively
> anymore and the focus is on systemd right now (see [1]). This is already
> mentioned in the wiki [2].
>
> Unfortunately I couldn't find any statement as to whether Arch will
> follow along with this. I'm running GNOME right now and at least have
> two dependencies for ConsoleKit: gdm and gnome-session.
>
> I couldn't find anything in regard to this issue in the bug tracker, so
> I'm wondering whether there has been some discussion over that already?
>
> I know there have been some discussions about systemd in the past, but
> are there any definite plans to switch "completely" to systemd at some
> point in the future? It seems that the package "initscripts-systemd" is
> more or less on feature parity with "initscripts" already.
>
> The reason why I'm asking is that I don't think that this kind of
> "double tracked" approach we are currently following, will work very
> well in the long run, especially when systemd is superseding more and
> more other packages.
>
> Don't get me wrong: I'm really glad about the fact that Arch Linux is
> supporting systemd so well. By no means I want to depreciate the work
> you guys have done so far. I do absolutely think that we have to provide
> both solutions in order to provide a smooth upgrade path. But personally
> I think that at some point we have to make a choice - just for the sake
> of simplicity. Personally I would choose systemd ;).
>
> Best regards,
> Karol Babioch
>
> [1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/ConsoleKit/
> [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ConsoleKit

ConsoleKit and systemd's logind don't provide the same API, as far as
I know. So Arch has to wait for the upstreams of these projects (such
as GNOME)  to re-implement the relevant functionality with logind
instead of ConsoleKit. It's not just a build-time decision distro
packagers get to make.