Re: [Lennart Poettering] Re: A few observations about systemd
Wouter Verhelst <wouter <at> debian.org> writes:
> > > Debian/kFreeBSD is here to stay, it's not going away. With that as a given,
> > > systemd is suddenly a lot less interesting.
> >
> > Once you stop taking things as a given there are a lot more opportunities for
> > improvement.
>
> kFreeBSD is hardly the only reason why systemd is a bad idea for Debian.
It's the only argument I've seen you mention. And I don't remember seeing
convincing arguments against it from anyone else in the thread either.
> > If you want to do whatever work is necessary to keep kFreeBSD working that's
> > fine of course. But the attitude that it's OK for kFreeBSD to set limits on
> > Linux development (or that developers working on Linux must handle the BSD
> > porting/compatibility to be "permitted" to adopt a new technology) smells of
> > trying to hold the project hostage, and I doubt it can have positive effects
> > for the project overall.
>
> There's nothing wrong with requiring portability.
Of course there is when it interferes with other goals. And your claim would at
least require a lot of further qualifications to avoid being totally absurd - if
you say any portability requirement whatsoever is fine, how much software would
remain in Debian after requiring portability to Windows? OS/2?
> > IMO letting kFreeBSD block a technology like systemd (or even letting it have
> > a significant impact on the discussion about whether it's desirable to
> > introduce the technology for the main Linux case) would only be justifiable
> > if there were very solid arguments why kFreeBSD is a big net win for the
> > project, or after a vote showing significant support for the port.
>
> IMAO, a statement of (paraphrased) 'portability is for weenies' isn't
Keeping portability in mind is a good thing especially if you're doing something
that is easily implementable with common interfaces. However in some cases
additional portability has very real costs, and it's by no means given that the
balance should go in the favor of portability.
> doing any of us a favor. Systemd might've been nice if it was portable
> to other kernels; the fact that it isn't, makes it less than useful for
> Debian.
That systemd isn't portable to other kernels affects kFreeBSD and Hurd. Given
that the contribution of those to the overall usefulness of Debian is
negligible, this has little effect on how useful systemd is for Debian.
> > > Whatever its features, if we have to jump through a large heap of hoops
> > > to get it to work at all, or to make life for maintainers of daemon
> > > packages not a complete nightmare, it's not likely to become the default
> > > in Debian any time soon.
> >
> > I think the life of many maintainers of daemon packages is a "complete
> > nightmare" now with sysvinit, compared to what it would be with systemd.
>
> It's of course your prerogative to have that opinion, but (as a
> maintainer of a source package that ships two initscripts) I disagree
> with it.
You disagree with systemd service files being much simpler than sysv init
scripts for many daemons? It may be your prerogative to hold that opinion, but I
think it contradicts reality.
> Especially since I doubt that supporting NBD exports with
> systemd is going to be possible, at all, given what I know about it.
You mean supporting that functionality would be completely impossible on a
system running systemd? Really? On what do you base that belief?
> At any rate, if we need to support more than one init system just so
> that Debian continues to work on more than just Linux, then Something Is
> Very Wrong(tm).
I don't consider it a big problem if someone uses his prerogative to Feel That
Something Is Very Wrong, as long as things work well in practice.
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