Re: systemd, again (Re: Cinnamon environment now available in testing)
Matthias Urlichs wrote:
>
> I also expect the Jessie upgrade to switch to systemd. Because,
> frankly and strictly IMHO, doing anything else makes no sense
> whatsoever.
This is exactly the thing I don't agree with.
I think _new installs_ of Jessie should use systemd as init (by
default, anyway), but _upgrades_ from Wheezy or prior should continue
to use whatever it is they were using before the upgrade, until the
administrator takes an additional positive action to convert to
something else. And I also think that "additional positive action"
should NOT consist of installing or upgrading any package, but rather,
something like changing what /sbin/init is a symlink to. (Hence the
earlier statement that all init systems in the archive should be
coinstallable, and that packages that need functionality provided by
one specific system should detect that it isn't available at runtime,
and gracefully degrade.)
I think this strategy is positively _necessary_ in order to ensure
that systems currently running Wheezy can safely be upgraded to
Jessie. There are simply too many wacky configurations out there; it
is not reasonable to demand that the systemd maintainers test them
all; it is also not reasonable to demand that people with wacky
configurations take extra steps prior to the upgrade in order to
preserve a basically functional system afterward. (Functional enough
to log in as root and make repairs, at least. Ideally without having
to find another computer on which to search the interwebs for
troubleshooting advice.)
Even if you think this is not _technically_ necessary -- even if you
think the systemd team _can_ reasonably anticipate everything that
might possibly go wrong upon a forced changeover in the middle of a
dpkg run, on an arbitrarily wackily customized system -- I would argue
that it will provide tremendous _psychological_ reassurance to people
who might be _worried_ that something will break. "Yes," Debian would
be saying, "we recognize that this is a major, disruptive change and
we have taken extra precautions to make sure it will only affect you
when you are good and ready, and if something _does_ break, you can
get back to the way it was very easily."
zw
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