Bug#727708: Bits from linux.conf.au

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Adrian Bunk writes ("Bug#727708: Bits from linux.conf.au"):
> There are at least three tricky areas:
> 
> 1. init systems will have to cope with packages supplying init scripts 
> in several formats they support.

Perhaps.  I'm certainly not expecting to solve this problem in the
general case in jessie.  In jessie we'll do this by having each init
fall back to sysvinit for packages which don't supply native support.

That may well be suitable indefinitely.

> 2. How to ensure that both systemd systems and non-systemd systems
> work equally well?
> If dependencies like "installing GNOME enforces systemd as init system"
> would be legal,

Implicit in "supporting multiple init systems" is that such
dependencies would have to be avoided.

But that doesn't mean they have to work "equally well" - see my other
message.

> 3. Switching init systems after installation.
> Assume I am currently using systemd.
> What is supposed to happen when I do "apt-get install sysvinit-core"?

I think that if you want to switch init system after installation, I
don't mind at all if you are expected to reboot.  (With the possible
exception of switching away from sysvinit.)

And I don't mind very much if service disablement (or even to an
extent service configuration) isn't translated.  It's probably better
to have the sysadmin redo that manually than have some kind of
unreliable and complicated automatic scheme.

Ian.