Re: Proposal: General Resolution on Init Systems and systemd Facilities

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Holger Levsen writes ("Re: Proposal: General Resolution on Init Systems and systemd Facilities"):
> On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 01:22:26PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> > If we found that the six month delay was repeatedly expiring with no
> > serious attempts at non-systemd implementations of the new features, we
> > could repeal this GR.
> 
> I'm pondering an amendment to copy this option but without the 6 month
> delay clause.

In practice, we (in Debian as a whole) generally delay things for much
longer than that, in order to give people a chance to catch up.  To me
it seems fair to ask no more of the people who have to reimplement
things for non-systemd, than we ask of other kinds of people who need
to do work to enable beneficial transitions.

Of course we don't have a set timescale for these other things because
they are usually not fraught.  Take as an example new GCC versions,
which you typically get /at least/ 6 months from having a clear notice
of a problem and an ability to see that you have fixed it.

If you just delete the bit about the delay, what will you replace it
with ?  If you say 0 delay then it amounts to standardising and
recommending in policy a change which actually makes programs buggy as
soon as you apply it.

We could suggest a per-feature negotiation about implementation
timescale but, please, no.

In other words: is it really not worth waiting a very short time in
Debian terms (1/4 of a release cycle) while adopting a feature, in
order to keep a fair few people much happier ?

FTAOD of course what you propose is up to you.

Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

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