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Re: choice in core infrastructure decisions (Re: Bug#684396: ITP: openrc -- alternative boot mechanism)



On 08/11/12 01:12, Russ Allbery wrote:
> There are choices that we don't support because the process of supporting
> that choice would involve far more work than benefit, and the final goal
> is excellence, not choice for its own sake.  For example, we don't allow
> users to replace the system C library with a different one.  That's
> something that we *could* do, but the general consensus of the project is
> that investing our effort in that is not the best way to produce
> excellence.

I kind of disagree with that. I don't think that the fact that we don't
support multiple C libraries is the result of a "consensus decision".

I think it's just because noone attempted to properly do that and prove
it's viability and usefulness either to a portion of the userbase or the
project as a whole.

Similarly, I don't think the kFreeBSD ports or any of the other Linux
architecture ports were a consensus decision. People just did it, the
work was of reasonable standards and useful both to expanding the
userbase and to improving the quality of the other ports.

People are working on building Debian with LLVM (which is great IMHO).
Very few people complained about that and the talk was very much
welcomed at DebConf. We even have a GSoC project about it. There are
other similar examples.

As for OpenRC, as far as I understand it, it's similar -but with its LSB
header compatibility much less intrusive- with file-rc. None of the two
are an /sbin/init replacement.

The fact that the systemd-upstart debate is hot and controversial
doesn't mean that everything else that is even remotely related to the
boot process must be rejected from the archive. And certainly not
because a few people think so and are being loud in a mailing list.

Regards,
Faidon


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