Is an init required to obey policy-rc.d during boot ?

[Lorenzo <plorenzo@disroot.org>]

[ please keep me in CC ]

Hello,

In bug #950851 the reporter says that runit is not policy compliant
because during boot it does not check the policy-rc.d hack before
starting sysv services.

However I read policy 9.3.3 as referring to maintainer scripts (
install, upgrade, remove) but I can't find anything about
boot or shutdown. In my mind the severity of that bug ranges from
wishlist ("please implement this new feature") to important (policy-rc.d
is part of an interface that is defined in policy and has a should for
maintainer scripts)

I can think of many ways to fix #950851 but I'm unsure if solutions I'm
thinking about are policy compliant or not, for example:

Is an init required to implement a mechanism like policy-rc.d or it's
optional?

It has to be policy-rc.d or it can be a different (native) one? Maybe
policy.rc-d is mandatory only for
sysv scripts but not for runit services?

It has to be effective only for maintainer script, or it has to cover
every way to start a service?

It has to be effective also during system boot?

Regards,
Lorenzo