sysvinit vs. new powerd...

[Michael Alan Dorman <mdorman@lot49.med.miami.edu>]

I've got a need for a more sophisticated powerd than the one you
include with sysvinit, so I'm packaging Alessandro Rubini's powerd for
Debian.

One obvious problem presents itself in that the new powerd has the
same name, etc, as the one in sysvinit.  I see four ways to deal with
this, and would like input:

 1) split sysvinit into sysvinit and sysvinit-powerd.  Probably
unpopular.

 2) remove powerd from sysvinit entirely, and make the new powerd
conflict with older versions.  Easy.

 3) make powerd replace sysvinit powerd.  Also not unreasonable, but
upgrading sysvinit could do unexpected things.

 4) use update-alternatives to allow selecting one.  I don't know
exactly what this entails.

I favor #2 for its simplicity.  I feel certain David Engel would
complain about #1 (and rightly so, IMHO).  #3 is really just a more
dangerous variant of #2.  I'm not sure what the point of #4 would be.

Have I missed anything?

Mike.
--
"Don't let me make you unhappy by failing to be contrary enough...."