[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#1016006: dbus-daemon: systemd | systemd-tmpfiles dependency not resolved gracefully on sysvinit systems

[Mark Hindley]

Simon,

Thanks for this.

On Mon, Jul 25, 2022 at 09:22:34AM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> Version 1.14.0-2 does not depend on systemd. It *does* depend
> on either systemd or systemd-tmpfiles, as a result of having
> /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/dbus.conf (and will be one of increasingly many
> packages that do this).
> 
> systemd-tmpfiles is a virtual package representing any implementation
> of the tmpfiles.d API. You can get this on a sysvinit/sysv-rc system by
> installing the systemd-standalone-tmpfiles package.
 
> sysvinit/sysv-rc is a non-default init system for Debian, and the init
> system is a core component of the OS, so you can expect some upgrades
> with a non-default init system to be non-trivial.

Obviously the basic explanation here is perfrectly correct. However, as they
stand, the dependencies being generated are causing users significant difficulty
(judging by several bug reports in recent days with the same underlying cause)
and APT does not readily find the correct solution.

A suggestion to make the dependencies work better for everybody without manual
intervention has already been made[1], but rejected. Respectfully, I suggest
that is reconsidered. I see no downsides to making the dependency

 systemd-standalone-tmpfiles | systemd-tempfiles

On systems where systemd is installed, the dependency will be already satisfied
and therefore noop. On systems without systemd, apt install the standalone
implementation.

Are there any technical reasons why this is not a good technical solution?

Thanks.

Best wishes

Mark


[1]  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1014805#15