On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 07:03:16PM +0000, g4sra via Dng wrote:
> Is this the rule for all packages that have dependency on SystemD for some functionality ?

My personal opinion on this is yes. Non systemd init is still possible in
Debian. So it appears some current versions of cockpit will not work on a Debian
system with sysvinit, runit or openrc. To my mind, that makes it a Debian bug
that should be fixed there with an explicit dependency.

> I was under the impression that missing dependencies from Debian packages was to be expected, and that it was not considered 'important' by some of the Debian devs.
> That was a while ago though (Lenny ?)...maybe opinions have changed.

Again, my take on this is that In Debian, systemd is the default, but it is
still not Essential in the Debian Policy technical sense.[1] Therefore packages
(in this case cockpit) must explicitly depend on packages (in this case systemd
or systemd-sysv) they require to function[2]. Debian Policy mandates this as a
'must', so not complying should be an RC bug.

However, as we have seen, some DDs are very quick to quote the Policy when it
suits them and will ignore it when it is inconvenient...

Mark


[1] https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#essential-packages

[2] https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#dependencies