Re: Pre-Depends: init-system-helpers

[Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au>]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 02:38:04PM -0200, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Nov 2014, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > If deb-systemd-* were to get merged in, it might be worth doing a name
> > change at the same time, I guess. Changing either before jessie doesn't
> > seem remotely plausible.
> > 
> > I wonder if it would make sense to just merge it all into the "service"
> > command; ie:
> > 
> >    # service --use-policy ssh start
> >    # service --use-policy ssh restart
> >    # service ssh enable
> >    # service acpid.socket mask-for-upgrade
> 
> "service" is an user interface, while deb-systemd-*, invoke-rc.d, and
> update-rc.d are first and foremost to be used by a package's maintainer
> scripts (postinst, etc).  They have different design goals.

My understanding is that update-rc.d is the recommended way for admins
to enable/disable services. Is that incorrect? (It's what I've documented
in my proposed init guide/policy)

Obvious alternative idea, provide a maintainer script oriented tool
under a different name:

  service-maintscript ssh start
  service-maintscript ssh enable
  service-maintscript acpid.socket mask-for-upgrade

But if we did that how would we recommend admins enable/disable
services? Just use the native stuff (rm /etc/rc?.d/S*ssh; systemctl
disable ssh)?

> IMHO it is best that we keep system interfaces separate from user interfaces
> like "service", 

Yeah, I see where you're coming from. My intuition goes the other way;
that it's better to have a single tool for both uses if that's feasible.
We don't have anything special for doing cron jobs via packages compared
to what admins might do to add a cron job, eg. Maybe that's a bad
intuition though.

BTW, it occured to me that it seems like a wart that update-rc.d doesn't
respect policy-rc.d -- as it stands, policy-rc.d can prevent a service
from (re)starting during install/upgrade, but it'll still start on the
next boot. Is that just something that never got thought of / done,
or does it actually make sense?

Cheers
aj