OpenBSD Journal

b2k16 hackathon report: Antoine Jacoutot on GNOME's path forward, various ports progress

Contributed by pitrh on from the first-frog-flying-from-france dept.

The first report from the b2k16 hackathon comes from Antoine Jacoutot, who writes:

I was so happy to go back to Budapest for a hackathon. I've been there more times than I can count and it's an awesome city made even more awesome thanks to our host robert@ !

I arrived late the eve of the event along with other flying frogs (espie@, landry@, danj@). We were immediately brought to a Pub to drink an unreasonnable amount of Dreher... fuel up for next day!

First task of this hackathon was for Jasper and I to upgrade to GNOME 3.22.1 (version 3.22.2 hit the ports tree since). As usual I already updated the core libraries a few days before so that we could start with a nice set of fully updated packages. It ended up being the fastest GNOME update ever, it all went very smoothly. We're still debating the future of GNOME on OpenBSD though. More and more features require systemd interfaces and without a replacement it may not make sense to keep it around. Implementing these interfaces requires time which Jasper and I don't really have these days... Anyway, we'll see.

Since it was a ports hackathon, I also took a small hike under /usr/ports/ to fix^update^clean^remove stuff. Nothing fancy, just the regular maintenance.

On the non-ports topic, I kept working on syspatch(8) which has been enabled in current since (but not yet useful obviously, since it runs on release). If all goes well and I don't destroy my fellow developers setups, syspatch *might* be enabled for 6.1 as a technology preview (as in, no promises, interface may change etc).

So Long, and Thanks for All the Tokaji!

Thanks for the report, Antoine!

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By Billy Larlad (69.178.115.138) larladtech@gmail.com on

    I hope the GNOME 3 devs reconsider the path they are on. It would be a real lose to lose GNOME3 on OpenBSD.

    Comments
    1. By Damien Couderc (91.135.188.215) on

      > I hope the GNOME 3 devs reconsider the path they are on. It would be a real lose to lose GNOME3 on OpenBSD.

      To be honest, i don't think they care.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (190.149.64.139) on

      > I hope the GNOME 3 devs reconsider the path they are on. It would be a real lose to lose GNOME3 on OpenBSD.

      you mean those retards who have pledged the systemd oath? it's easier to reason with trump

  2. By Salim Shaw (sshaw) salimshaw@vfemail.net on

    The systemd evilness is causing issues more than anyone cares to discuss. If you're a Gnome guy, perhaps it's a good time to look for another desktop manager now.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Cowboy (37.220.35.202) on

      > The systemd evilness is causing issues more than anyone cares to discuss. If you're a Gnome guy, perhaps it's a good time to look for another desktop manager now.

      I can just sort-of understand why systemd is considered "evil", and I can definitely understand why OpenBSD devs would reconsider Gnome's future.

      That being said, there is the Lumina desktop; I have yet to test it out, but it is BSD licensed (though it uses Qt) and is used in PC-BSD. The desktop environment apparently runs on OpenBSD too.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Cowboy (109.163.234.5) on

        > I can just sort-of understand why systemd is considered "evil", ...
        Correction: I now completely understand why systemd is considered "evil" and agree it is indeed evil.

  3. By Anonymous Coward (46.183.221.231) on

    I'm all in for the complete removal of gnome.

    Comments
    1. By rehcla (213.225.10.164) on

      > I'm all in for the complete removal of gnome.

      Can we get MATE instead? :)

    2. By Nick (152.62.44.206) on

      > I'm all in for the complete removal of gnome.

      Me too.

    3. By Ryan (184.71.29.106) on

      > I'm all in for the complete removal of gnome.

      I would actually much rather see a resolution to the ongoing degradation of support for !systemd systems in gnome than just turfing the whole thing. The environment has some positive sides to it. It feels quite nicely integrated in its current state on OpenBSD. Antoine and Jasper (and more?) have clearly put a lot of work into getting the gnome desktop functional here, why so quick to drop the hammer on just turfing it?

      Comments
      1. By Billy Larlad (137.229.105.162) larladtech@gmail.com on

        > > I'm all in for the complete removal of gnome.
        >
        > I would actually much rather see a resolution to the ongoing degradation of support for !systemd systems in gnome than just turfing the whole thing. The environment has some positive sides to it. It feels quite nicely integrated in its current state on OpenBSD. Antoine and Jasper (and more?) have clearly put a lot of work into getting the gnome desktop functional here, why so quick to drop the hammer on just turfing it?

        Yes, that's my opinion as well.

        Perhaps those of us running GNOME on a BSD or a Linux without systemD could politely remind the GNOME developers that we _do_ exist. Whether they care is rightly up to them.

        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (162.253.11.173) on

          > Perhaps those of us running GNOME on a BSD or a Linux without systemD could politely remind the GNOME developers that we _do_ exist. Whether they care is rightly up to them.

          This notion that GNOME developers deliberately ignore or don't care about users without logind (and systemd, by extension) seems problematic to me. In this blog post, for example, they note that ConsoleKit is unmaintained and no longer supported. I'm unable to find a maintained and well-supported ConsoleKit fork. You act as if this is simply a matter of keeping ConsoleKit support in the tree, but that project is dead and the functionality it offered is considered essential.

          Why should the GNOME developers do the extra work to maintain ConsoleKit or keep code in the tree to support a project that nobody seems interested in maintaining? If non-systemd users want GNOME supported for them, they need to step forward and update it or provide a maintained, functional alternative. An alternative was being created when they made this decision (systembsd), but that project doesn't seem to have materialized.

          Comments
          1. By Anonymous Coward (69.178.115.138) on

            > Perhaps those of us running GNOME on a BSD or a Linux without systemD could politely remind the GNOME developers that we _do_ exist. Whether they care is rightly up to them.
            > This notion that GNOME developers deliberately ignore or don't care about users without logind (and systemd, by extension) seems problematic to me. In this blog post, for example, they note that ConsoleKit is unmaintained and no longer supported. I'm unable to find a maintained and well-supported ConsoleKit fork. You act as if this is simply a matter of keeping ConsoleKit support in the tree, but that project is dead and the functionality it offered is considered essential.
            > Why should the GNOME developers do the extra work to maintain ConsoleKit or keep code in the tree to support a project that nobody seems interested in maintaining? If non-systemd users want GNOME supported for them, they need to step forward and update it or provide a maintained, functional alternative. An alternative was being created when they made this decision (systembsd), but that project doesn't seem to have materialized.

            Thank you for the informative reply.

            I did not mean to suggest any ignorance or malice on the part of the GNOME developers. I enjoy what they've created and certainly defend their right to base it on any technology they want (even if that means leaving BSD users behind). I also agree that the solution may be for BSD and systemd-less Linux users to step up and offer some alternatives to work with.

            In the meantime, I still think it is okay for end-users to thank the GNOME developers for their work and for their efforts so far to keep GNOME cross-platform.

          2. By Landry (2a01:e34:edcb:85c0:e8ab:da8e:bc1c:4d8d) on

            > Perhaps those of us running GNOME on a BSD or a Linux without systemD could politely remind the GNOME developers that we _do_ exist. Whether they care is rightly up to them.
            > This notion that GNOME developers deliberately ignore or don't care about users without logind (and systemd, by extension) seems problematic to me. In this blog post, for example, they note that ConsoleKit is unmaintained and no longer supported. I'm unable to find a maintained and well-supported ConsoleKit fork.

            If you actually look, we're using https://github.com/ConsoleKit2/ConsoleKit2 which is developed/maintained by a fellow Xfce developer.

            Comments
            1. By Anonymous Coward (162.253.11.173) on

              > > Perhaps those of us running GNOME on a BSD or a Linux without systemD could politely remind the GNOME developers that we _do_ exist. Whether they care is rightly up to them.
              > > This notion that GNOME developers deliberately ignore or don't care about users without logind (and systemd, by extension) seems problematic to me. In this blog post, for example, they note that ConsoleKit is unmaintained and no longer supported. I'm unable to find a maintained and well-supported ConsoleKit fork.
              >
              > If you actually look, we're using https://github.com/ConsoleKit2/ConsoleKit2 which is developed/maintained by a fellow Xfce developer.

              Thank you for the link. I was under the impression that ConsoleKit2 was also dead: I stand corrected.

      2. By Anonymous Coward (151.61.133.21) on

        > > I'm all in for the complete removal of gnome.
        >
        > I would actually much rather see a resolution to the ongoing degradation of support for !systemd systems in gnome than just turfing the whole thing. The environment has some positive sides to it. It feels quite nicely integrated in its current state on OpenBSD. Antoine and Jasper (and more?) have clearly put a lot of work into getting the gnome desktop functional here, why so quick to drop the hammer on just turfing it?

        I thank Antoine and Jasper (and the others, if any) for their excellent work, and it's sad if it will end up being wasted, but the reality is that they can't possibly keep up with all the crap SystemD is becoming, so, sooner or later, if an alternative doesn't come up, they'll be force to drop support. Better face reality now than later.
        I don't know the current status of systembsd, but I haven't hear anything new, so I assume (sorry) it is not in well shape. If a dedicated project can't keep up with SystemD, how can just the two of them?
        My apologies if I assumed wrong, I'll be happy to hear that systembsd is well and alive.

  4. By BSDfan (37.131.133.41) on

    What happened to GSoC systemd shim - systembsd?

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