Bug#727708: tech-ctte: Decide which init system to default to in Debian.
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:
> I don't think either of these are the right question. Even if we change
> the default init system for jessie, because we *must* support backwards
> compatibility with sysvinit for upgrades, there is no justification for
> requiring packages to do anything else for jessie and no policy change
> is needed.
That isn't obvious to me. We have, in the past, allowed upgrades to
require a preliminary upgrade of one or more packages. The udev
transition comes to mind. We *could* do the same thing here and require
an init upgrade as a pre-upgrade step when going from wheezy to jessie,
alongside a dependency on systemd or upstart (added by debhelper, for
example) for all packages providing startup configuration but not an init
script. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good option, but it is an
option that we should discuss.
Also, we will eventually have to decide whether to drop the requirement
that packages provide sysvinit-compatible init scripts. Even if we agree
on a requirement to do so for jessie, we could drop that requirement for
jessie+1 (and indeed will want to if we choose any init system other than
sysvinit or "all of the above," given that most of the benefits of either
upstart or systemd from a packaging perspective will only be seen when we
take that step).
We could always defer that decision until jessie+1, but that's the
decision with the most impact on kFreeBSD and Hurd, and if I were them,
I'd want to know whether that's the eventual project direction or not as
soon as possible so that I have as much time as possible to decide on my
next steps.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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