Re: systemd-fsck?
Russ Allbery wrote:
> The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> writes:
> > There is a considerable difference, however, between automatically
> > installing the new version of a program (even if in a different package
> > for whatever reason) and automatically installing a completely different
> > program from the original, simply because both programs are intended for
> > the same role.
>
> > You could argue that it's appropriate to do anyway - e.g. that it would
> > be appropriate to automatically switch existing systems from gcc to
> > clang if the default compiler referenced by build-essential got changed.
> > It still shouldn't be treated as the same thing as a simple version
> > upgrade, however.
>
> I think we need some sort of critical debconf prompt here for the jessie
> release, similar to how we handled the change of /bin/sh to dash and how
> we handled the switch to startpar. Probably in systemd-sysv, which is the
> package that forces the conversion. It's quite surprising to, for
> example, install network-manager (which is an application that ca be used
> with non-GNOME window managers) and end up with a new init system.
I strongly disagree: if the maintainers of the various packages have
done their jobs well (which they have), upgrading should be entirely
transparent. While the people in this discussion certainly hold strong
opinions about init systems, I don't think it's reasonable to inflict a
debconf prompt on every Debian user; we should not assume that because
*we* care, *they're* required to care. In practice, people will test
the wheezy->jessie upgrade path quite extensively, report any bugs that
occur due to this or any other transition, and we'll hopefully make it
a seamless transition.
I do think it makes a lot of sense for sysvinit and other init systems
to do as systemd has done, and make themselves available as a binary
other than /sbin/init, with a single conflicting package for each init
system that installs an /sbin/init symlink. That would make life
significantly easier for anyone who has to support more than one init
system, or who regularly experiments with init systems and wishes to
have a second system installed as a backup.
I'd suggest, instead, that this notice belongs in the release notes:
"The jessie release changes the default init system from sysvinit to
systemd. Upgrading to jessie will switch from sysvinit to systemd on
many systems, to satisfy the dependencies of various packages such as
common desktop environments or infrastructure. You can manually switch
your system from sysvinit to systemd by installing the systemd-sysv
package. If you prefer another init system, you may wish to install the
systemd-shim package rather than systemd-sysv; systemd-shim provides a
minimal systemd compatibility layer to satisfy some packages depending
on systemd."
- Josh Triplett
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