Re: Integration with systemd
Thomas Goirand <zigo@debian.org> writes:
> 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.
So, let's explore this "Policy on a case-by-case basis" approach.
I think we should adopt sysusers.d fragments as the preferred mechanism
for creating system users (with some rules, such as a standard for how to
name the users and a requirement that the UID be specified as - unless one
goes through the normal base-passwd registration process). It supports a
declarative syntax, doesn't require putting runes of code into a shell
script, moves us farther down the path towards reducing us of maintainer
scripts for most packages, and avoids the whole dependency and
pre-dependency mess with adduser that took forever to sort out. The
syntax for sysusers.d is straighforward to parse, and support for
non-systemd init systems via a trigger or boot-time script (or both) via
adduser could be easily written, hiding the distinction between init
systems.
So I should propose putting that into Policy, right? Presumably you would
object.
And presumably you would instead propose banning use of systemd-sysusers
and sysusers.d and requiring continuing to use adduser from maintainer
scripts as we currently do. I would object because to me that's obviously
inferior to a declarative syntax. I've been beating the drum for
declarative syntax to replace maintainer scripts in Debian since before
systemd existed, and I personally don't care whether systemd happens to be
the project that came up with a good facility or not. If I see a good
opportunity for moving to declarative syntax, I'll support it.
So now neither of our proposals has consensus, and Policy continues to be
somewhat ambiguous about systemd-sysusers. (Policy currently says, in
kind of a weird place, that using adduser is a "should," which makes it a
non-RC bug to not do so, but shoulds are often interpreted by the project
to imply a certain amount of maintainer discretion.)
Now what?
This is why I don't think your strategy of avoiding a GR and just having
Policy sort this out somehow doesn't work.
(Also, just to head this off in advance in case anyone wants to argue it,
I personally am dead-set against a position that says "if we can't get
consensus, we require everyone to do what we've always done." I think
that's a recipe for endless sniping, hard feelings, and eventual
obsolescence. Debian is too large now to be able to do literally
*everything* by consensus; there are some things where we'll always find
someone who objects to every course of action.)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: