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Re: Bug#727708: tech-ctte: Decide which init system to default to in Debian.



On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 08:41:10PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 06:21:27PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > Well, I've said this before, but I think it's worth reiterating.  Either
> > upstart or systemd configurations are *radically better* than init scripts
> > on basically every axis.  They're more robust, more maintainable, easier
> > for the local administrator to fix and revise, better on package upgrades,
> > support new capabilities, etc.

> Can you please go in to more detail why you believe this was true?

> The lsat time I played with Upstart, I saw a lot of policy moved from
> shell scripts into C code (which I would have to edit and recompile)
> if I wanted to change things.

I'm surprised by this comment.  Very little policy is actually encoded in
upstart's C code; in fact, the only policy I can think of offhand that is is
some basic stuff around filesystems, which, aside from some must-have kernel
filesystems without which it can't boot the rest of the system, should be
entirely overrideable via /etc/fstab.  Perhaps you could expand on what
policies you saw a need to change?

> I also was extremely frustrated with a massive lack of documentation,
> where at least with shell scripts I could read the scripts to understand
> what was going on.

There's an awful lot of documentation available for upstart, but of course
people look for documentation in lots of different ways and we aren't
necessarily presenting the documentation where and when we need it.  There's
comprehensive documentation available at
<http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/>, but from context it's possible that's
not what you were looking for.  Aside from adding links to manpages to all
of the upstart jobs themselves (which I don't think is reasonable), are
there things you think should be done to make the right documentation easy
to find?  (For starters, what were you trying to find documentation of?)

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com                                     vorlon@debian.org

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