why do we use systemd?

[Tom H]

On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 1:50 PM, Rahul Sundaram <metherid at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 1:34 PM, Tom H wrote:
>>
>> You might not need to use all of the systemd tools but its tools
>> aren't independent.
>
> That is similar to how optional features are handled in many collections.
> If you use some features,  they might pull in other requirements but the
> features themselves are optional.
>>
>> For example, Ubuntu patches logind in order to use
>> it with upstart rather than with systemd.
>
> systemd explicitly documented which interfaces they consider independent and
> which ones they don't and I linked to the document earlier. Ubuntu's use of
> logind is backporting + reimplementation of some interfaces using a shim and
> they are moving away from it to systemd itself since the reimplementation is
> lagging behind in features and functionality and the Debian move to systemd
> made it easier for them to follow that path.

I understand and agree but nonetheless maintain that we shouldn't call
systemd a "collection of tools with a shared codebase where most of
the tools are optional" since the systemd executables aren't as
independent of one another as those of util-linux and coreutils.
Although you more or less hint at this with "with a shared codebase",
most people don't.

(I use Ubuntu 14.10 on my laptop and systemd 204 is available so by
the time that it's released systemd-shim might be relegated to 14.04
LTS.)