Bug#727708: init system other points, and conclusion

[Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no>]

]] Russ Allbery 

First, thanks to both you and Ian for the quite comprehensive
write-ups.

> If the package later changes the flags in some orthogonal way, it's
> easy for the system to miss that change.  This is something that,
> under systemd, will probably require development of new tools to warn
> the adminsitrator of what's happened.  upstart avoids this problem by
> having the whole configuration be managed as a conffile.

You might want to have a look at systemd-delta.  On my quite boring home
machine:

: tfheen@xoog ~ > systemd-delta
[MASKED]     /etc/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules → /lib/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules

1 overridden configuration files found.
: tfheen@xoog ~ > 

It can also output diffs.

> I think the upstart approach is better, but I think the drawbacks of the
> systemd approach could be mostly overcome with some fairly simple Debian
> tools.

We were initially considering using ucf and checking if the file in /etc
had changed (before we had per-line overrides and such), but with the
more complex overrides now available, I think systemd-delta is a better
solution.  I guess we could integrate that into the packaging somehow
and present a useful UI if you've overridden a line that changes.

[...]

> But I do think it blunts some of the porting argument.  The non-Linux
> ports are going to have to port, fork, or replace systemd components
> anyway, regardless of the choice of init system, or drop out of
> feature parity with the Linux ports.

It's not like we have feature parity today.  Hurd has the whole
translators setup.  kFreeBSD has jails and ZFS.  Nobody is arguing that
we must ship those with Linux too, so why should the feature parity have
to go in the other direction?  Personally, I think the more interesting
use case for kFreeBSD is on the server side, and not as a GNOME
workstation.  I also realise a file system is not on the same magnitude
for a distribution as an entire desktop environment, but we're looking
at degrees here anyway, not a black and white picture.

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are