On Mon, 20 Jul 2026 at 23:17, Paul Eggert <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 2026-07-20 13:10, Luca Boccassi wrote: > > If it's required, why can it be disabled with a switch? > > The --enable-systemd switch was put in, as I recall, because we figured > there'd be two kinds of distros: those with systemd where you really > need systemd for 'who' etc. to work or where you'd prefer systemd to the > non-systemd approach; and everybody else. We figured distros would > decided on their own which way to go. Although many distros now use > systemd, some do not.
The issue with that is it's not a static choice, some distros like Debian support dynamically switching at runtime an existing installation between systemd and anything else. But aside from that, how can something that is required be optional? Either it's required and then you can't disable it, or it can be disabled because it's optional. Saying it's required but it can be disabled is contradictory. > > Will you > > accept a patch that drops the --enable-systemd option and makes the > > library always mandatory on Linux? > > It doesn't sound right to require --enable-systemd for Linux-based > platforms that don't use systemd by default for 'who' data. This > includes platforms like Alpine and Gentoo, along with older Debian etc. > Even if libsystemd is available, it's not always right for 'who' to use > libsystemd to get utmp info. This is why we left this up to the distro. So it is not "required and essential functionality", then?
