Bug#727708: init system coupling etc.

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 08:56:44PM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote:
> * Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org) [140213 19:09]:
> > To start with, I therefore propose the following amendment to L.  I
> > think it is no weaker except in ways that we would agree were in fact OK
> > if we found ourselves needing to rule on them specifically, and this
> > addresses points that people have raised here.  The first paragraph of
> > the "loose coupling" section is replaced by the following:
> > 
> >   In general, software may not require a specific init system to be pid
> >   1, although degraded operation is tolerable.  The exceptions to this
> >   are as follows:
> > 
> >    * alternative init system implementations
> >    * special-use packages such as managers for init systems
> >    * cooperating groups of packages intended for use with specific init
> >      systems
> 
> I'm not sure if this already covers the case of glue-packages, or if
> we need to cover them (i.e. for a package foo, it's ok, if foo depends
> on foo-sysv | foo-systemd | foo-upstart | foo-openrc, and each of
> those four depends on a specific init system).

I think this class of problem is handled by saying "software" rather
than "packages", much as we're saying "requires" rather than "depends
on"; I generally like Ian's approach of not trying to overspecify here.
If people feel this is unclear then maybe we need some kind of
for-avoidance-of-doubt rubric though.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson@debian.org]