Re: Debian systemd survey
Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> writes:
> Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:
>> I'm happy to provide both, integrate patches, etc., although I think
>> init scripts are awful and my level of personal motivation to work on
>> init scripts compared to anything else (whether it be systemd or
>> upstart or whatever else someone might invent) is quite low.
> That is one of my concerns: Once Debian GNU/Linux has systemd as
> default, noone will an longer provide init scripts, let alone tested
> init scripts, which will severely hurt non-Linux kernels in Debian.
Yes, that's one of the risks of not managing to port one of the other init
systems to non-Linux kernels.
We are, in general, not going to get people to work on things they don't
want to work on, and init scripts are awful and long-overdue for being
replaced. I think some of the burden is going to have to be born by the
Debian porters for platforms for which there's currently nothing better
available, whether by porting something better, developing some conversion
process for one of the other formats, or maintaining the init scripts in
other packages and submitting patches. I will promise to review and
integrate such patches promptly, similar to how I've tried to review and
integrate patches for Hurd support.
Using an imperative language for a descriptive purpose is a bad mismatch
of tools and has been ever since the practical effect of init scripts has
become fairly standardized. We need to switch to a descriptive language;
we will gain huge maintainability benefits and will have far fewer bugs of
the type that have plagued init scripts for decades: bad shell error
handling, incorrect handling of unusual cases involving half-stopped
daemons, inconsistent PID handling, stopping unrelated binaries with the
same executable name, and so on, all of which are avoidable but only if
you're very careful and know what you're doing or get lucky when
translating opaque and obscure templates.
I definitely do *not* agree with breaking systems that use shell init
scripts proactively, but shell init scripts are so inferior to any
descriptive replacement that I agree with you they're likely to bitrot if
left solely to the maintenance of the average Debian packager, who will
probably quickly embrace something easier to maintain and stop paying
attention to them.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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