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GNOME deepens systemd dependencies
Adrian Vovk, a GNOME contributor and member of its release team, recently announced in a blog post that GNOME would be adding new dependencies on systemd, and soon. The idea is to shed GNOME's homegrown service manager in favor of using systemd, and to improve GNOME's ability to run concurrent user sessions. However, the move is also going to throw a spanner in the works for the BSDs and Linux distributions without systemd when the changes take effect in the GNOME 49 release that is set for September.
Vovk's announcement started by noting that GNOME does not have a formal, well-defined policy about systemd dependencies. The rule of thumb, he said, was that GNOME doesn't absolutely depend on systemd, but some individual features of GNOME may break without it. But there is no project-wide policy that dictates that the project should avoid depending on systemd, even though GNOME has historically been available on many non-Linux operating systems and Linux distributions that do not use systemd as their service manager.
The now-retired GNOME wiki has a "What We Release" page published nearly 12 years ago that explained the GNOME release team's philosophy on dependencies and non-Linux systems clearly; the project is focused on ""a tightly-integrated desktop environment based on the GNOME Shell running on a GNU-based operating system with a Linux kernel"". Any non-Linux usage, such as running GNOME on a BSD, is considered a secondary concern.
Systemd, even then, was listed as a component that is encouraged but not required by GNOME. Wayland—which is soon to be the only supported display system for GNOME—is also named as a recommended (but not required) component. The page hasn't been ported to the GNOME Project Handbook that is still maintained, but GNOME's philosophy toward non-Linux usage and favoring systemd has not changed, even if it is not currently codified as a formal policy.