Bug#835507: Please clarify that sysvinit support decision is not going to expire

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

Ian, quick question for you because you might know the answer off the
top of your head.  Does running stretch with sysvinit as your init
system work reasonably well, or at least work well enough that there are
a small number of bugs we will likely be able to fix in the stretch time
frame?  What I say below is predicated on the assumption that init
scripts are basically functional for stretch.  If that's not true I'd
need to rethink my position.


I think we want to reaffirm that policy section 9.3.2 and section 9.3.3
represent current policy for init scripts, quoting particularly the
following text from section 9.3.2:

     Packages that include daemons for system services should place scripts
     in `/etc/init.d' to start or stop services at boot time or during a
     change of runlevel.
I think it is also reasonable to reaffirm that this is Debian policy
     until changed through the policy process or by the TC.

I don't want to make a blanket statement that it's a bug not to include
an init script.  The systemd package includes a number of daemons and
services and installs no init scripts, and no really, that actually is
the right answer for that package.  Policy should basically means bug of
normal severity.  (I've always wished that the policy people would be a
bit more nuanced especially when taking a term from RFC 2119, which
more-or-less already includes the nuanced language they need, but
people seem to do a fairly good job of accepting the nuances even though
that's not quite what policy says.)

I do *not* want to get into describing all the cases where it is a bug
to not include an init script, nor do I want to get into all the cases
where it isn't.  The TC tried to do that during the systemd discussion
with text for the L and T varients of options.
I think they did about as well as they could, but I think a policy
should better captures the reality of the situation than the TC's
previous best efforts.

I think including 6.1.5 language saying that we encourage maintainers to
merge patches adding support for init systems including init scripts
would be valuable.
I think we have such language floating around from previous resolutions
to re-use.