[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#923240: policykit-1: Please support alternative logind implementations

[Simon McVittie]

Control: tags -1 + pending

On Sat, 10 Aug 2019 at 10:50:18 +0100, Mark Hindley wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 09, 2019 at 02:35:13PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> > Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this. Non-critical changes
> > to important components like policykit-1 did not seem like a good idea
> > during the buster release freeze.
> 
> Yes, I understand that. It also seems to me that now, early in the bullseye
> cycle, is a good time for such changes.

Yes, this is a much better time for that sort of thing (you'll notice that
the upload I'm preparing has some other potentially-disruptive changes).

> Since #923244 was resolved in version 241.1-1+debian1, libelogind0 is ABI
> compatible with libsystemd0 and exposes the same symbols for runtime linking,
> although providing a subset of functionality. This is explained fully in the
> libelogind0 package description: sd-login(3), sd-bus(3) and sd-id128(3) APIs are
> implemented in full with most other functions returning -ENOSYS.

I hope sd-daemon(3) is also implemented? Before it was absorbed into
libsystemd, that used to be a "copylib" intended to be pasted into portable
software like dbus-daemon - so hopefully it's still usable as a standalone
implementation of things like the LISTEN_FDS protocol.

> I will be very happy to work to resolve issues related to elogind and its
> integration with other packages. You are correct that a reportbug template
> including that information would be useful.

Thanks, please subscribe to policykit-1 bugs so that you can keep an eye
on this.

Unfortunately reportbug doesn't currently tell us who is implementing
default-logind, logind or libsystemd0 - I think this is because
of the versioned Provides, and I've reported that as #934472 in
reportbug. I've worked around that by adding reportbug metadata to get
elogind, libpam-elogind, libpam-systemd and libsystemd versions to be
included in bug reports. Hopefully there will not be a third parallel
implementation any time soon.

If elogind support results in a disproportionate number of bug reports,
we might have to either revert your change, or add a presubj file
asking elogind users to report bugs that cannot be reproduced with
systemd-logind against elogind instead of policykit-1 - but hopefully
that won't be necessary.

    smcv