I'm up way to early in the morning, but one of the reasons I can't get
back to sleep is thinking about this, so I'll add my thoughts.

On 2022-04-01 14:43:34, Mark Hindley wrote:
> This issue came up again on #devuan-dev today WRT pipewire.
>
> I ran the same quick and dirty test that I did in July 2021 to get a rough
> estimate of the size of the issue in ceres.
>
> There are now about 103 unforked binary packages in ceres whose src
> Build-Depends: systemd and are therefore unbuildable on a Devuan system. That
> is an increase of about 10 since July 2021. The list is attached.
>
> Really this is a combination of lazy packaging in Debian and the fact that
> systemd is so monolithic. There is no reason why a package build should depend
> on the init system that is running.
>
> I did have a brief exchange with Michael Biebl asking for a Debian systemd-dev package
> to be created. He wasn't completely averse, but it isn't going to be anywhere on
> his priority list. There is already a wishlist bug[1].
>
> Even having achieved that, pursuing each case to work out why the systemd
> build-depends and getting it changed is there is going to be very time
> consuming.
>
> I am not sure this is something we can just ignore, but I don't really have any
> other (palatable) suggestions. I am hoping somebody else might!

I'll start by mentioning that I'm currently in the process of upgrading
all my boxen to Chimaera. I install from a debootstrap script I wrote,
but this time I'm trying mmdebstrap. I'm planing on spending extra
effort on security. I also want to move away from pulseaudio on the
desktops, though I have my doubts about pipewire, and an ALSA / Jack
based system might be better. There are other things I'm looking at
changing from one thing to another, like I might move from Apache 2 to
Nginx, and I want to switch to a nftables based firewall.

Most of this list I have no idea what they even are.

When I mention systemd dependencies, I mean install time, not build time.
I'm only checking for direct dependencies, coz it's way too early in the
morning to dive into all those rabbit holes. I'm only looking at
Chimaera in my comments here.

> alsa-utils

So much for escaping Lennart by dropping puleaudio. However, no direct
dependencies.

BTW, I used to work in the music industry making MIDI equipment, and even
now I still keep my hand in mixing for gigs. So this time around I'd
like more pro quality sound, which is why I plan to look at Jack.

I haven't gotten around to dealing with sound on my new Chimaera build
script yet, other than to make sure pulseaudio isn't installed.

> bluez

I turn off Bluetooth on my desktops, too big of a security hole, and I
don't use it anyway. No direct systemd dependency. Yay, nothing dragged
it in yet.

> dunst

I use this already, the Chimaera version doesn't have any direct systemd
dependency. I had no plans on getting rid of it.

> e17
> efl

Re-ordered these two, since efl is the base libraries e17 is built on top
of, and they are both made by the same group. I used to be one of the
developers for that, but left for reasons. Last I checked there was an
optional systemd dependency, but you could build without.

Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) used to pay me to be the package maintainer for
these, back when PlayStation 3 was released. This is why I got the very
first PS3 ever sold in the world with Linux pre-installed on it, coz
that's one of the things YDL was selling.

I don't use them anymore.

> e2fsprogs

Damn, kinda an important package, but again no direct dependency in Chimaera.

> gvfs

One of the things that often comes for the ride, so far I've avoided
anything that depends on it in this Chimaera build, don't want it anyway.
No direct dependencies.

> lirc

I'm either gonna convert one of my old desktops into a media centre, or
build o new ARM based one. Either way, remote control is in my thoughts,
so this might be needed. I do recall it is popular for this sort of
thing. It does have a direct dependency on libsystemd0, so hopefully
there's something better.

> nagios-tang

I use Icinga for my system monitoring, which is a fork of Nagios that can
use Nagios plugins. This particular one isn't even in Chimaera, nor do I
use tang, didn't know what that is until I looked it up just now.

Out of all the other Nagios / Icinga stuff a couple of quick synaptic
searches turned up, only something called nsca-ncg-server has a direct
systemd dependency, and again never heard of it until it popped up for
this search. Tang itself has no systemd.

> ntpsec

Since I'm looking at increasing security, and I already use ntp, ntpsec
is one thing I'm thinking of looking at. It only recommends systemd.

> pipewire
> pipewire-media-session

Isn't this another Lennart abomination? If so, then I doubt you could scrape systemd off it.

> pulseaudio

Again, Lennart thing, doubt you could remove systemd from it.

> tang

Mentioned above.

> wireguard

This is the one that kept me awake. I want to move from OpenVPN to
WireGuard. One of the design goals of WireGuard is to be small and
easily audited for security. Which is kinda the exact opposite of
systemd. Would not surprise me if the author freaked out to find someone
infested it with systemd.

This one I did dive down the rabbit hole, didn't find any systemd
dependencies in Chimaera.



So are Debian package maintainers slowly adding systemd dependencies just
coz they drank the cool aid, not coz the packagens actually need it?

--
A big old stinking pile of genius that no one wants
coz there are too many silver coated monkeys in the world.