[systemd-devel] feature request: dlopen

[Cristian Rodríguez]

El 22/02/15 a las 23:08, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton escribió:

>   the problem, zbigniew, is that the intended use of this "silent noop"
> feature - to make it *possible* to have an alternative PID1 - *hasn't
> happened*.  any upstream software developer who has added in support
> for systemd has done so by *ripping out* the former alternative code.
> not a single upstream system that i've seen has done *any* kind of
> run-time detection *at all*.  it's all compile-time.

This is because software is written mostly by sane people who has at 
least a clue about what they are doing and talking, they are not doing 
what you wish, because what you are proposing is batshit insane.


>   aside from getting the message across to upstream developers about
> doing runtime detection, i feel that what you guys really need to do
> is to set up conferences with everyone, to talk - urgently - about
> ways to ensure that the alternative systems which the wholesale
> adoption of systemd has excluded may be reinstated as *runtime*
> choices (not compile-time).

Ha! that's a funny one.. why should we do that? the burden on doing that 
is on the people that want this theorical alternatives.

  that may mean discussing a set of APIs
> that end up being DL'd (like PAM is, right now),

PAM is not dlopen'ed.. pam *modules* are.. and PAM is not something to 
cite as an example how to do things *today* in 2015..

> the situation now is one where people believe that systemd is being
> heavily promoted to the exclusion of all other PID1 alternatives,
> developed with a focus on fedora / redhat to the exclusion of all
> other distros, developed for desktop systems *only* to the exclusion
> of servers and embedded systems... it's no wonder that there's a lot
> of upset people in the software libre community!

You dropped your tinfoil hat now..

>   i know it sounds weird to go backwards, but the situation is -
> amongst other not very nice things - that the GNU/Linux world now has
> a new monoculture attack vector at the PID1 level.... in code that's
> being *actively developed and extended, dramatically*.


Please go and learn how and particulary *why* things work a certain way 
before telling people how to do it, in fact don't tell.. .post patches 
or experiment yourself.

You can dlopen systemd libraries at your own risk, if you know exactly 
what you are doing and why it will work..in most cases it will end in a 
terrible mess that we will get the blame for it.. I just wrote a patch 
to disallow dlopen of libsystemd alltogether..I hope it won't be needed 
because I still trust developers not to be that misguided.