Bug#218530: Suboptimal conditional rune for initscripts

[Mark Baker <mark@mnb.org.uk>]

Ian Jackson wrote:

> Package: debian-policy
> Version: 3.6.1.0
>
> While trying to merge an NMU to my package, I spotted an idiom
> obviously copied from the policy manual:
>
>        if [ -x /usr/sbin/invoke-rc.d ] ; then
> 		invoke-rc.d package <action>
>        else
> 		/etc/init.d/package <action>
> 	fi
>
> This would be better expressed as
>
> 	if type -p invoke-rc.d >/dev/null 2>&1; then
> 	...
>  
I think it's debatable whether searching the path for a command in an 
init script is a good thing, but if we don't search the path for the 
test we shouldn't do it when we actually execute the command, so the 
code you quote is wrong either way.