Systemd 197 released [LWN.net]

Systemd 197 released

Posted Jan 9, 2013 14:19 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
In reply to: Systemd 197 released by Zack
Parent article: Systemd 197 released

A port of systemd to FreeBSD won't happen, the amount of Linux-specific functionality that systemd uses makes that a daunting task. And even if somebody were to do the work, Poettering made it very clear that he wouldn't maintain the resulting ifdef mess.

The best thing for the kFreeBSD people to do would be to create their own non-portable init replacement and use all the FreeBSD goodies such as kqueue, jails, capsicum, devd and whatnot. This project should share the portable subset of systemd's interfaces and add its own extensions for kFreeBSD specific functionality. I can't think of another way to bring systemd's advantages to kFreeBSD while retaining an easily understandable and hackable code base. Yes, there'd be some duplication of functionality, but you can't have everything.

Besides, the main obstacle for wide-spread systemd adoption isn't lack of portability but Ubuntu. They are the only distro with a relevant user base that doesn't offer systemd at least as an option.

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Systemd 197 released

Posted Jan 9, 2013 16:23 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (1 responses)

I think it's more fair to say that a FreeBSD port won't happen soon. Once systemd has settled down, there's a better chance that necessary changes to enable it on systems other than Linux will happen. FreeBSD may adopt some Linux-like features that will make porting systemd practical (especially once they've proven their worth in Linux) and Lenaert Poettering will probably move on to a new project, so systemd may have a maintainer who's more willing to tolerate some ifdefs to bring in other Unix-like systems. Not going to happen soon, but never is a very long time.

Systemd 197 released

Posted Jan 10, 2013 10:34 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

This is not only about the willingness to tolerate ifdefs. I said earlier that porting systemd to kFreeBSD would be a daunting task, and that was probably an understatement. Poettering had this to say about the matter:
https://lwn.net/Articles/524920/
There are real technical issues going on here, to the point that "porting" systemd to kFreeBSD would mean to essentially rewrite it. At least that is the impression that Poettering's comment left me with, and he should know given that he wrote the thing.

Of course, things would be different if FreeBSD were to adopt the essential Linux APIs that systemd needs. But I don't think they will as most of the functionality is already there, just in different form. Linux has devtmpfs/udev, FreeBSD has devfs/devd. Linux has epoll/inotify/fanotify, FreeBSD has kqueue/kevent.
Nevertheless, it *might* happen, just like we *might* one day genetically engineer pigs to grow wings and fly. But it's coffee cup reading more than anything else.