Compilation of atril (PDF viewer) reveals a strange service launch

Development Discussion
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#1

Compiling atril-1.26.0 (directly from apt source), a PDF viewer, I came to remark that it creates a service which I wonder if it's really necessary?

In shell, ev-daemon.c, that makes a d-bus service

$ cat /usr/local/share/dbus-1/services/org.mate.atril.Daemon.service
[D-BUS Service]
Name=org.mate.atril.Daemon
Exec=/usr/local/libexec/atrild

then

$ file /usr/local/libexec/atrild
/usr/local/libexec/atrild: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64

I noticed that each time atril is called to view a PDF, it starts that service...

What is that service?
Why is it necessary (?) for a PDF viewer?

Thanks

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#2

Welcome @Pas_Glop to the community!

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#3

That service does not exists on any of my installs (both 22.04 and 24.04-pre-alpha) and Atril is working fine.
On my systems, atrils starts /usr/lib/atril/atrild without needing a service to do that. So to answer that question: No, it is not necessary at all.
At least on my computers it isn't.

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