RELEASE 1.5
The release branch 1.4 has been stable for a long time. Nethertheless there is still much room for improvement which is also shown by the hundreds of commits that went into this release.
Most prominently, Python 3 is the default variant now. Just as in the previous release branch there is only one code basis for python2 and python3 but the primary test target has changed. If you run "make test_1000" then you see the result from systemctl3.py now, and "make 2" will derive systemctl.py from it. The testsuite.py itself is also run by a python3 interpreter now.
The systemctl3.py script is accompanied by a systemctl3.pyi script with type hints to allow for strict type checking. Static code analysis is a big advantage. Not only for nullable types but also for mere typos that can not be missed anymore when the testsuite does not touch that line. Still the testsuite has a line code coverage of 94% for this release.
There are some breaking changes though. Especially the variable expansion has changed which was wrong in 1.4 but some scripts may already rely on the way it worked. Some of the root/user directories have changed in their real locations as well. And the computation for the default-services and starting order has been improved as well.
The new socket support may be a reason for problems in old code as well. Actually, the release 1.5 does only implement non-accept units where the xy.service is directly started when the xy.socket is started. The accept-listeners code can be tested with "-c TestAccept=yes" as seen in the testsuite, and the listeners themselves have a "systemctl listen" command. But it is incomplete beyond repair. In the real world however it was all sufficient to support sshd and cvsd in containers.
As a consequence, the support for xy.target units was improved as well, and multi instance template services have much wider support in their features. The logging features implement a number of redirects for the service stdout/stderr as well. Because of that, check the JournalFilePath property when looking for the place where the logs from the service go.
As mentioned already, there is a new commandline feature in the 1.5 release branch which did not exist in 1.4: you can enable/disable internal options and defaults via "--config Feature=xy" on the commandline. Some of the environment variables are still supported (atleast when the original systemd does as well) but a "-c DefaultUnit=your.target" will override them. Any global variable in the systemctl3.py code is generically accessible through that commandline option.
You will need those when you like to finetune the support for service that can automatically restart themselves when they fail. The timeout variables have a default so that it is not enabled by default - but some services have explicit values in their unit file which will promptly enable that feature now. Note however that only very simple strategies are supported here and we ask you to use the HealthCheck features of your docker environment to get things right.
Internally, there are a number of changes as well. One important thing was the original start of the 1.5 branch where the exit-code of the program is not derived from just the return value of a function but it also checks for the ".error" bitmask. That's in preparation of some C99 implementation in the feature/cplusplus branch of this project. It will not be merged soon but the foundation is there where the Python code and C/C++ code represent the same logic with the same variables and the same function names and types.
UPCOMING RELEASE 2.0
Python2 can not be installed on Ubuntu24.04 and AlmaLinux 9.3 (202311). The RHEL7 distribution runs out of support by June 2024 (with some extended support till 2026). As such the Python2 development in this project will be dropped at the end of 2024. This will see a switch to version 2.x by 2025. Note that the code will not change and it can still be used with python2 and the testbuilds.py will still test it until 2026 - however the current two versions systemctl.py and systemctl3.py will be dropped in the git repo to just systemctl.py being run by python3.
The switch to a RELEASE 2.0 does also allow to reset the BASEYEAR of the versioning scheme. It is close to running out of numbers.