Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>]

Brian wrote:
> On Tue 14 Oct 2014 at 12:33:06 -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>
> > Scott Ferguson wrote:
> > > I'm guessing you really don't want an OS without logging... :)
> > syslog works just fine - don't need (or want) systemd to take over
> > logging with a binary format
> The journal logs to rsyslog by default on Debian. It works great and
> gives far more detail than it did before. 99/100 people are impressed.
>
> > > Based on the large number of posts you've made complaining that Debian's
> > > plans don't match your needs.
> > > If you took that as a "if you don't like it b*gger off" then you took it
> > > wrongly - I reserve that for those who continually talk about departing
> > > Debian. It seems that you, and others, are bent on demanding something
> > >from developers that those developers don't want to do - it appears to
> > > upset you and cause you stress. In short - a fruitless exercise (unless
> > > I've seriously misjudged you and complaining does gives you pleasure).
> > Some of us actually have to plan for things like transitions - and
> > the lack of clarity regarding development plans makes that rather
> > difficult.
> Plans are great. At some point though you need to get down to a bit of
> testing. But you probably know that.
>
> > Ok... so multiple init systems are going to be supported in Jessie,
> > and maybe beyond - ok.  What seems to be very much up in the air is
> > whether that choice will be (well) supported at upgrade or install
> > time.  That makes a rather big difference.
> Depends what you mean by "supported". There is no problem in installing
> sysvinit after an upgrade or before upgrading. It works really well.

"No problem" is easier to say than to validate.

First off, there's a big difference between a default installation of 
systemd, followed by replacing it with sysvinit-core, vs. being 
presented with an install choice (as one is when it comes to boot 
loader, for example).

There's also the matter of how manual the process is.  There's been 
discussion here about things that have to be uninstalled/installed 
(Single cases of "I did this, and it worked just fine" are not that 
reassuring ).  On the other hand, there does seem to be work on an 
"init-select" package (https://packages.debian.org/jessie/init-select) - 
which looks like it should make it a simple process.

Then, there are lots of dependencies, metapackage definitions, shims and 
such that all have to work properly to build a system without systemd - 
and dependency hell is all the more likely when one has to uninstall 
something as entangled as systemd.

Finally, there's the matter of regression testing.  Debian Policy, and 
the TC resolution, state that alternate init systems must be supported - 
with specific reference to sysvinit scripts - but I kind of wonder what 
degree of regression testing will be applied as opposed to alternate 
init installations, as opposed to the default systemd configuration.  
Again, I expect that testing would be more intense if the installer 
explicitly gave a selection of init systems.

Miles Fidelman




--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra