Marc Haber <[email protected]> writes: > On Tue, Oct 20, 2026 at 10:01:50AM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: >>On Tue, 20 Oct 2026 at 00:42:33 +0200, Marc Haber wrote: >>> I would like to write package dependencies that a certain package >>> indicates that it won't work without systemd, most prominently that >>> it would NOT work with sysvinit. >> >> What feature(s) of systemd? I know systemd's detractors often say >> it's monolithic, but it's actually quite modular, and the down side >> of that is that dependent packages do need to know which parts they >> are depending on. > > In this case, its systemd service unit is quite sophisticated and > reaches a level of security that I have never even seen TRIED to > achive in an init script. There is no init script, and the "cron job" > which is actually invoked by systemd timer in the package, will > horriby break with sysvinit. > >> If the same transition had been done today, I think we'd probably >> have packages named init-is-systemd and init-is-sysvinit, with the >> same meaning as what's currently systemd-sysv and sysvinit-core >> respectively. > > All this should be documented.
https://wiki.debian.org/systemd/PackageDependencies - please everyone feel free to update and fix any misunderstandings and errors
