On Jul 27, 2013 4:44 PM, "walt" <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> First hint:  it's a mess -- don't do it on a critical machine.
> (My main machine is ~amd64 and that's why I'm doing it on virtual
> ~amd64 machines first.)
>
> The new gnome-shell demands that systemd be installed, even if you
> don't intend to use it.
>
> The latest systemd conflicts with udev because the udev project
> has been rolled into systemd, which now provides all of the files
> previously installed by udev.
>
> Therefore your machine will still boot without udev because systemd
> installs all the udev files. You don't need to start or use systemd
> if you don't want to, but the systemd package must be installed
> *before* you reboot and after removing udev.
>
> Removal of udev has caused a few (temporary) problems with useflags,
> because a few packages still depend directly on udev instead of the
> newer (!systemd ? udev) which means accept either one but not both.
> That will get fixed soon, I'm sure.
>
> The right way to upgrade gnome is probably to remove every gnome
> package on the machine, which will avoid many of the conflicts I've
> had to fight for the last two days -- but of course I did it the hard
> way instead :)
>
> You can try emerge -au gnome-light early in the update, which is
> simpler than emerging gnome in all its immensity, but that's no
> guarantee of success -- I'm sure you'll still run into conflicts
> between packages and useflags, but it might be a bit easier.
>
> When you see conflicting packages that won't install, I suggest
> deleting both packages immediately -- let portage sort out the
> conflicts.  Just keep removing packages until portage finally
> stops complaining.
>
> Beware of pambase, however.  I finally took Canek's advice and
> removed consolekit from the machine and unset the useflag for
> all packages, including pambase and polkit.  I'd suggest you
> get pambase and polkit re-installed with the proper useflags
> before you try to reboot.  Dunno if that's mandatory, but I did
> it that way and had no problems (yet).
>
> I've finished updating my virtual gentoo systemd machine now,
> but I'm still fighting with the virtual openrc machine and I'm
> not sure how it will turn out.  More tomorrow :)

I haven't upgraded yet to the last update (although I've been using GNOME
3+systemd for years), but I do know this: the primary reason of GNOME's
dependency on systemd is logind, and logind *CANNOT* run correctly if
systemd is not the running init.

So you not only need to install systemd: you need to use it as init. I
don't even think logind can start if systemd is not running.

And actually, the long term plan is for systemd --user to basically replace
gnome-session-manager, so just installing systemd is not going to work at
all in the future, even if it *may* seems to work now (which I'm pretty
sure it doesn't).

systemd provides some pretty complex functionality for logind (and
therefore GNOME) while running; it's not just some libraries.

Regards.