The Borg will prevail

[mean_dean]

Why on earth did you do that?

I had to see all this backporting/sneaking that was going on.

A follower, as opposed to the former position of leader.

Not sure I considered them a leader. More of a project that danced to its own tune. Sadly that tune has changed or they are just following long with the rest...dunnoo...

[mean_dean]

The lib is there to provide systemd support - interfaces between systemd and the binaries included in the bsdutils package - so if systemd is not installed it's useless and never used.

That does beg the question, why couldn't libsystemd be listed as an optional library and then pulled in if and when systemd is installed?

[cynwulf]

systemd is a build dependecy, so there is linkage to that lib. The lib is just the minimum requirement and probably preferable to installing the whole of systemd.

Not saying I agree with it, just that it's how debian do a lot of dependencies. In many cases a piece of software provides interfaces to interop with other software. A distribution like Slackware provides one big package with everything included. Debian breaks packages up and only installs what's needed. i.e. libsystemd0 is only needed for linkage by specific packages, so only gets installed if they are present. In this case its bsdutils which happens to be an essential package.

[mean_dean]

I just dont understand why libsystemd would be needed if like you say it is useless/unused unless systemd is installed. It seems like you would only need libsystemd if systemd is installed. And if I remember programming class, you could specify optional libs that are used if installed and ignored if not installed.

But I suspect all of that is above and beyond me brain...especially after my dilaudid days...weeks.....months...

[cynwulf]

It gets pulled in purely because they built against it. Perhaps something will break if it's not present, not sure and only one way to find out - nuke it and see.

systemd depends on libsystemd0 anyway so it always gets installed with that.

[mean_dean]

I agree, why should someone care about yet-another-lib on a system that is already full of them. Thanks, yet again, for the reality check.

[Randicus Draco Albus]

Personally, I think caring about what is installed is good, if the purpose is to learn what is there and why. It leads to a better understanding of the system and (should) make one less susceptible to FUD. It is a case of analysing information as opposed to uncritically filling one's head with (not understood) information. Knowing what those libs are, are not, what they do and what they do not do is beneficial.

[mean_dean]

agree with that too

[mean_dean]

meds must be kickin in...

always important to know what is on your system and understand what it does...and with that being said....dont see any reason for libsystemd to be a concern....

[cynwulf]

It's good to know what's on your system, but it's not good when people just don't understand what the stuff on their system actually does or why it's there and simply come to their own conclusions. For example - with regards to libsystemd0, I'm not sure that's worth several hours trying to purge it or building your own bsdutils to avoid it... it might be, but I'd like to see some evidence that it's running a daemon which opens a back door for Lennart Poettering first... before spending time procrastinating, hand wringing and apt pinning...

I think the "all the systemd shit OUT" is just the unintelligent bazooka vs gnat approach from some Debian users who have never really gone beyond package management and just see packages with systemd in the name installed and get all hysterical.
.
Well systemd is taking over Debian anyway, but you can run Debian for the time being without it - how long that will be is anyone's guess, but due to the nature of Debian and big software projects in general, it will eventually polarise and support for sysvinit from package maintainers will just erode and decay away. Especially if upstream start dropping it from newer releases or make it harder to support.