Bug#727708: init system discussion status

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> Russ Allbery writes ("Bug#727708: init system discussion status"):

>> Whether systemd upstream should support the SIGSTOP protocol is
>> certainly debatable, but I'm very reluctant to support an option that
>> tries to force the systemd maintainers to support the protocol
>> indefinitely as a Debian-specific fork.

> We have endless Debian-specific patches which are precisely there to
> support additional protools which make packaging and integration easier.
> OK, nowadays there is less need of this because our technical choices
> have been more widely recognised as good, but it is not something we
> should be afraid of.

I'm doubtful that either of us are going to convince the other on this
point.  I don't consider it comparable to the other examples you're
citing, and I think it's inobvious that raise(SIGSTOP) is a good technical
choice.  Simple, yes, but that's not the same thing.

Anyway, it's not at all clear to me that we need to argue about this here.
If we adopt upstart, and a bunch of daemons are adapted to SIGSTOP, that's
obviously going to increase the utility of supporting SIGSTOP in systemd.
I would rather let the systemd maintainers discuss that situation with
upstream and reach their own conclusions given the dynamics of that
situation, which are difficult to predict in advance.  If we adopt
systemd, then I think it's fairly uncontroversial to ask maintainers to
adopt support for systemd's socket activation or, failing that,
notification protocol.

So, either way, I don't see the utility of making this kind of statement
now.

> I think we need to add both protocols to both daemons.  This is because
> I want integration to be as easy and uncontroversial as possible.

This is the sort of statement that carries one meaning when stated as a
personal opinion as an individual Debian contributor, and a completely
different meaning when included in a TC decision.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>