[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#923244: policykit-1: Please support elogind backend

[Mark Hindley]

Package: policykit-1
Version: 0.105-25
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainers,

policykit-1 needs specific support for elogind, an alternative implementation of
the DBus login1 API for systems not running systemd as pid 1.  Without this
pkexec and items such as restart, suspend and shut down from the desktop are
either unavailable or do not function correctly.

Choice of policykit-1 backend is currently made at compilation time. 

There appear to be 3 possible choices for adding elogind support:

 1) Change policykit-1 source to be configured and built twice against both
    libsystemd-dev and libelogind-dev, generating different flavour binary
    packages for users to install.

 2) Implement some sort of runtime dlopen switching.
 
 3) Commit libelogind to always be ABI compatible with libsystemd and arrange
    for libelogind to ship its own version of libsystemd.so.

Of these, 2) has been suggested by Adam Borowski, but I have not seen a working
implementation. 3) seems to have the potential for numerous incompatibility and
maintenance issues. I have proof of concept patches for 1) both against 0.105-25
and 0.115.

I am happy to work with you to provide tested patches. Perhaps you could
indicate which route you would lkie to follow or suggest alternatives we have
not considered.

Thanks

Mark