On 20/07/16 11:44, Jaromil wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jul 2016, fsmithred wrote:
>
>> On 07/19/2016 06:10 PM, Rick Moen wrote:
>>> Saying libsystemd0 'does something' merely because higher-layer GNOME
>>> code probed it for a function and then decided to do or not do something
>>> based on what it found (my high-confidence surmise about your gvfs
>>> anecdote) entails very peculiar construing of the verb 'to do' -- and
>>> I'm pretty sure hardly anyone else uses the verb quite that way.
>>
>> Oh, you must have missed my last report. Surely, you would agree that
>> executing an executable file is doing something.
> technically speaking, one doesn't even need to "run an executable" to
> execute code. Either by shared-lib linking or by dynamic loading
> (dlopen), a program linking a library can execute code provided by the
> library in its own stack. Such code will run with the exact same
> access than the calling code (access to file descriptors, processes
> etc.).
>
>> For the past two years, people have been saying that libsystemd0 is just a
>> library, and it does nothing if systemd is not installed or not running.
>> I've been skeptical of such claims, but until yesterday, I wasn't sure.
>> Neither one of those claims is accurate. Among the files that the
>> libsystemd0 package provides, at least two of them are executable files.
>> There may be more that aren't located in /lib/systemd/.
> [...]
>
>> To summarize: libsystemd0 runs its program(s) even when systemd is not
>> installed.
> This may be incorrect, as I don't see any execve() in libsystemd.
>
> What we can say is that libsystemd0 runs its code, called by other
> programs, even when systemd is not installed.
>


No, I don't think that is correct, I think you could say that other
programs can use code in libsystemd0, even if systemd isn't installed.
libsystemd0 doesn't run anything, it just provides code.

Rowland