Bug#975075: tech-ctte: Should maintainers be able to block init compatibility changes?

[Mark Hindley <mark@hindley.org.uk>]

Elana,

Thanks for passing this on.

On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 03:36:45PM -0800, Elana Hashman wrote:
> Less than 1% of users are installing sysvinit-core, with a steady
> downward trend.[1]

I accept that the number of users is small, although the figures referenced omit
users of openrc and runit. It is also worth noting that is is currently
moderately difficult to switch away from systemd to another init. Suggestions of
ways of making this more user friendly have been rejected[1]. In this case using
popcon as definitive evidence of the actual demand seems questionable.

> elogind is very difficult to support in its current state (see the
> following bugs: [2] [3] [4] [5]), which is why Michael does not want to
> maintain support for it.

He may not want to, but I still see no technical or other reason why this should
be blocked: elogind has been in the archive since buster; it is specifically
mentioned in the winning GR option as technology to explore; the logind and
default-logind virtual packages have been in the Policy since version 4.4.0 of
July 2019

My assessment of the bugs that Michael references is rather different.

 - #923244 was resolved in February 2019 and whilst I realise that Michael
    remains unhappy with the way that resolution was achieved, the solution
    works for both non-systemd users and systemd users and I am not aware of any
    regressions.

 - #934491 was closed after being fixed by the resolution of #935910 in apt.

 - #959920 was really about systemctl providing systemd, and only indirectly
    related to elogind (which conflicts with systemd, as you would expect).

 - #968379 was resolved with the latest upstream release of elogind.

Although elogind inclusion and support was controversial and hard-won, these
specific issues have been resolved. Making use of the default-logind and logind
virtual packages actually makes elogind rather easy to support.

Mark


[1]  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=935304