GR - collecting proposals (was Re: systemd is here to stay, get over it now)

[Thorsten Glaser <tg@debian.org>]

Steve McIntyre wrote:

>with this constant bickering and sniping. If you must do it, start the
>GR and see how that goes. I even offer to second it just to help get

Can you help formulate? I do not feel my English skills are
up to that.


Also, what options do we need?

1) systemd is the only init system supported in jessie (for Linux)
   => we accept the change and require all users to follow our new
      default

2) systemd and sysvinit are both supported in jessie, but sysvinit
   is only supported for systems upgraded from older Debian installs;
   package maintainers have to at least not actively break existing
   sysvinit support and should accept patches to keep sysvinit with
   sysv-rc working
   => we accept the change but do not enforce it on all users; we
      intend to keep the old way working for as long as reasonably
      possible, even though it means degraded operation for some
   (maintenance burden is on the package maintainers, plus a
   possible team of volunteers)

3) systemd and sysv are both supported in jessie (for all ports,
   probably - Hurd in any case, I don't know what the kFreeBSD
   people have); package maintainers have to at least not actively
   break existing sysvinit support and must accept patches to keep
   sysvinit with sysv-rc working
   - new installations must either offer a choice of init system,
     or install systemd and offer switching the init system to
     sysvinit later (e.g. via apt-get install, possibly with the
     famous "Yes I know what I am doing" prompt)
   (maintenance burden is on the maintainers of d-i and systemd
    and sysvinit, for this; the way is to be decided by CTTE if
    those do not find a suitable one by themselves)
   - existing installations of older (pre-jessie) Debian may be
     upgraded to our new standard init system systemd, but only
     after the user has been suitably warned, e.g. via a debconf
     propmpt at priority "medium" (i.e. not shown to novices)
   (maintenance burden is on the package maintainers, plus a
   possible team of volunteers, for the init scripts; maintenance
   burden for the upgrade scenario is with the maintainers of the
   affected packages (sysvinit and systemd, AIUI))
   => we promote our new default, but permit our users to choose
      for themselves, if they feel they are technically skilled
      enough to make this choice and live with the limitations
      of a non-standard system; switching back and forth between
      the two supported systems is always possible

4) all init systems currently in Debian are supported in jessie;
   maintainers must support sysvinit at least as in 3) and are
   encouraged to accept patches for file-rc, upstart, possibly
   OpenRC and runit
   - new installations operate as in 3) except support for all
     init systems that are not either the old default (sysv-rc)
     or the new default (systemd) may use a more complicated
     path (e.g. switch from systemd to sysvinit first, then to
     the other init system)
   (maintenance burden for sysvinit is on the package maintainers;
    maintenance burden for the other init systems is on the
    maintainers of those init systems; the path to switch between
    init systems is to be decided by CTTE if the maintainers of
    the init systems do not find a suitable way by themselves)
   - existing installations can keep running, although we may
     migrade existing installations of the old default to the
     new default as in 3) above (e.g. debconf "medium")
   => we promote freedom of choice, and our new default is the
      preselected choice, but users who feel they can cope with
      it are free to choose differently; switching back and
      forth between init systems is subject to whatever the
      maintainers come up, or CTTE if they don't, but switching
      should be possible and defined but not necessarily easy

You may note I agree, in all of these proposed options, that
we can change the default init system to our new default which
CTTE has decided on, for both new and existing installations;
I just require that the user is to be informed about it and
can abort the upgrade if they do not wish the change (at debconf
"medium" priority; I think about something like the linux-image
packages do to prevent removal of the running kernel), and that
the user has a defined way to switch between init systems.


Thanks in advance,
//mirabilos