:: Re: [DNG] OpenRC and Devuan
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Author: Boruch Baum
Date:  
To: parazyd
CC: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] OpenRC and Devuan
On 2016-05-03 01:19, parazyd wrote:
> The current init system is old. Ancient. We should all agree on it.
> Devuan is looking for a new init system that is not systemd and my
> personal choice for this task from now on is Gentoo's OpenRC.
> ...

I use a version of Manjaro linux built for openRC, and am happy
with it. However, it strikes me as misguided at this point for
any of devuan's limited development energy to focus on adopting
an openRC option instead of on resolving all outstanding systemd
issues and on establishing a solid release 1.0. Don't get me
wrong - I don't mean to be discouraging. I just don't think this
is appropriate timing.

What might be nice is some form of 'init-system-sentry' to keep
cruft of unused / unwanted init-systems out of the way. On a
Manjaro OpenRC system, there exists cruft from both sysvinit and
from systemd, if only because of the n>>1 packages that a user
will install at some point post-distro-iinstallation that include
scripts for those init systems. The presence of the cruft can
confuse one into making unnecessary changes in wrong places that
have no effect.

Instead of an openRC effort at this point, I'd rather see a hook
for apt-get / aptitude / etc, to move all files specific to init
systems not being used to their own file hierarchies, eg.

  /var/cache/init-systems
    /sysvinit
      /etc
      /lib
      /usr
    /openrc
      /etc
      /lib
      /usr
    /systemd
      /etc
      /lib
      /usr


With something like this, devuan could remain true to init-system
freedom, keep cruft out of the way, and make it easy for
sysadmins to switch amongst init systems.

The idea could be developed further, to use debian's proven
'update-alternatives' method for switching amongst init-systems.

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