Bug#765803: tech-ctte: Ask before changing init system when upgrading to jessie and Inform about init systems when installing jessie

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

On Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:27:11 -0700 Cameron Norman <camerontnorman@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 18, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Vincent Bernat <bernat@debian.org> wrote:
> >  ❦ 18 octobre 2014 13:32 +0200, Svante Signell <svante.signell@gmail.com> :
> >
> >> In summary, the CTTE is asked to make a decision on debconf warnings on:
> >> 1) Changing init system on upgrades (including sid)
> >> 2) Inform about alternate init systems for new installations
> >
> > 2 is quite far-fetched. Why not a debconf warning to tell there are
> > alternatives to nano? And another one to tell there are alternatives to
> > bash? The installation will take several hours to let the user know
> > there are alternatives to almost any component.
> 
> Well one good reason is that when you install nano or bash,
> vi/vim/emacs and zsh/fish are not uninstalled.

And likewise, the systemd and sysvinit coexist on the same system; only
one of them can own /sbin/init, but you can have both on the same system
and boot either one via init=/lib/systemd/systemd or
init=/lib/sysvinit/init.

I don't think it makes sense to prompt on new installations of systemd.
I do think it makes sense to prompt on upgrades from sysvinit to systemd
if the user has any system configuration for sysvinit that will no
longer apply (modified /etc/inittab, modified /etc/init.d/*, etc).  I'd
prefer to avoid prompting on routine upgrades to systemd (without any
such configuration), but as a one-time migration, it wouldn't be *that*
awful.

I also think we need an entry in the release notes.

- Josh Triplett