Installing snapd on 14.04.5 desktop downgrades xorg et al.

[Thomas Voß]

When trying to install the latest snapd on a 14.04.5 desktop image, the installation of systemd (as a dependency of snapd) triggers a whole bunch of downgrades as systemd-shim is removed and replaced with systemd.

We have to adjust the packaging such that installation of systemd does not trigger such behavior for packages depending on systemd-shim in trusty.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

I do not believe there is any path to successfully install snapd on a 14.04 desktop system. Only one of systemd and systemd-shim can own the systemd dbus services; systemd doesn't implement them in a way that will work with upstart as pid1, which means we need systemd-shim to own them so that the desktop consumers of the services will function; and it's intrusive surgery to make systemd work without registering them.

This was a known limitation when the SRU went through, and it was allowed because the understood target for snapd on 14.04 was server/cloud environments, not desktops. Has that changed?

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

On 15/12/16 17:25, Steve Langasek wrote:
> This was a known limitation when the SRU went through, and it was
> allowed because the understood target for snapd on 14.04 was
> server/cloud environments, not desktops. Has that changed?

It's unexpected for me, and will be substantially difficult to message
("install this but not on a desktop"). So I think we need to press on
this to understand it better. We do want snaps on 14.04, its a key part
of the value we're offering, but we can't make that a choice that
negatively impacts a desktop.

Mark

[Zygmunt Krynicki (zyga)]

I'm marking this as invalid as it seems to be a bug specific to systemd packaging, not to snapd per se.

[Dan Streetman (ddstreet)]

please reopen if this is still an issue