Re: Debian systemd survey

[Vincent Lefevre <vincent@vinc17.net>]

On 2013-05-30 13:59:09 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Also, determining which flags to pass to the daemon from some other
> configuration file, which is a common use of /etc/default files, is a hack
> to work around the fact that an init script is not really user-editable.
> We therefore move the parts that we expect users to change into a
> separate, simpler configuration file to avoid making them brave the
> dangers of the init script and deal with lots of dpkg configuration file
> prompts when we fix bugs in the init script.  But with a systemd or
> upstart configuration file, it becomes reasonable to have the user just
> edit that file directly to pass different parameters to the daemon, since
> the configuration file is already as simple, in many cases, as the
> /etc/default file was.

Most config files are not really user-editable under Debian. I mean:
they can be editable, but there are serious drawbacks during upgrades.
Indeed most often the user has the choice between installing the new
version (but his local changes are lost) and keeping the old version
(but he doesn't benefit from new features, and worse, the old version
of the config file is not guaranteed to work well with the new version
of the package). The user can also start a shell to do the merge on
his side, but this may take time... So, splitting config files is a
way to avoid that, not in all cases but in most cases (this is not
specific to sysvinit, apparently just a consequence of the old
wishlist bug 32877, from 1999!).

Aren't systemd and upstart config files affected by this problem?

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Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.net> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
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