Bug#727708: Call for votes on init system resolution

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

Colin Watson wrote:
> Part of my concern with T is that it's so mealy-mouthed.  "Where
> feasible", "should", "encouraged", etc.  By contrast, L is a bit
> heavy-handed.  It sounds like we may share some common goals between
> these, and maybe if we want those to stick properly we need to state
> those more explicitly rather than using proxies.  Do we agree, for
> instance, that we want it to be possible to run Debian's major desktop
> environments with any of the init systems with communities active in
> developing support for them?

Could you elaborate a bit about your objections to the wording of the T
option?  Is there some particular aspect of the wording of T that you
believe should be written more clearly, and does that represent a
syntactic or semantic cleanup?  And, more to the point, is there such a
cleanup that would affect your vote on T?

> On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 11:25:02PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > Neither T nor L actually imply what I think will happen in practice.  The
> > T option gives explicit blessing to adding dependencies on non-default
> > init systems, which I think is something that's only appropriate on a
> > case-by-case basis for edge packages and cooperating package groups and
> > isn't appropriate general advice.  It also doesn't distinguish between
> > right now and after the jessie release, which I think is inappropriate.
> 
> Agreed on both counts.  I understand why Ian (was it?) wanted to have
> the "multiple init systems for the foreseeable future" text, as a
> statement of general intent, and I don't disagree with that.  But I
> would prefer if the specifics ("Therefore, for jessie and later
> releases:") were marked simply as "Therefore, for jessie:".  That seems
> to dispose of part of your objection to L.

Given this statement, and Ian's followup objecting to that language,
might I suggest that there should be a version of the L rider that
includes the sunset provision limiting it to jessie, since there is
clearly support for such an option?

- Josh Triplett