Re: Integration with systemd

[Thomas Goirand <zigo@debian.org>]

On 10/31/19 9:32 PM, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
> Let's take e2fsprogs for example.  I had applied a patch which had a
> cron script alternative on top of the timer unit file.  It turns out
> the cron script was buggy, and it took multiple tries before we got it
> right --- because I don't maintain a test system with sysvinit to test
> it.  So I applied patches, but I was *not* doing my own testing before
> releasing updates with the cron support.  I'd call that "best efforts"
> support.
> 
> The GR should make clear whether or not what I did was sufficient ---
> I took patches and attempted bug fixes to support sysvinit --- or
> whether I should have been doing more explicit testing for sysvinit.

As much as I understand, at this point in time, the project considers
that what you did was enough. I don't think we need a GR for this.

> The GR should also make clear whether it would be a good thing if I,
> as the Debian Maintainer, were to deliberately use some esoteric
> systemd feature for which there is not non-systemd alternative in a
> package's packaging scripts. (I wouldn't do such a thing, in general,
> since I personally a good programmer should do things portably, and
> using an esoteric systemd feature is *not* good programming practice.
> But it's clear that others, like perhaps Josh Triplett, feel
> differently.  And I don't feel that I should necessarily be imposing
> my personal beliefs on everyone.)

IMO, this type of decision should go in the policy, case by case, and
I'm not sure a GR is the solution: it's going to be a generic "use all
of systemd" vs a "be careful to use only things implemented elsewhere".
 I don't think this works, as often, there is maybe a middle ground
"well, it depends on the situation". For the systemd-sysusers in
tomcat9, probably best would have been to keep thinks as they were
rather than using an implementation that only has the side effect as to
get locked-in, especially when it's easy to avoid the problem. For other
cases, maybe it's nice to be able to use systemd-only features, and here
I'm thinking namely about cgroup stuff, for example.

Cheers,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)