Steve Litt wrote:
> On Mon, 2 May 2016 21:05:18 -0400
> Hendrik Boom <hendrik@???> wrote:
>
> > Is there a summary of some sort explaining the various init systems,
> > how they're put together, how they work, and especially the salient
> > points on which they differ?
>
> I've tried. See
> http://troubleshooters.com/linux/init/features_and_benefits.htm#init_system_feature_matrix
>
> Keep in mind these two things:
>

> 1) I'm an order of magnitude less knowledeable on init systems than the
>    average person on the supervision@??? mailing list.
>    Those guys found several mistakes in my matrix, and I'm not sure I
>    corrected all of them.

>

> 2) Like everyone else, I have likes, dislikes and maybe an agenda. I'm
>    a huge fan of daemontools-inspired inits, and I have a significant
>    dislike of systemd.

The problem with supporting multiple init systems is that
there is an init script for each service that has to be
ported or rewritten.

Launching Devuan while maintaining the sysvinit status quo
has already stressed the pool of volunteer manpower to the
limit.

So the practical way forward is to leave the task of
developing init scripts for the alternative init systems
to the users of those systems.

If someone would volunteer to coordinate the infrastructure
needed to collect, systematize, debug and distribute the the
tens or hundreds of scripts involved (one for each service),
multiplied by the number of init systems to be supported,
I'm sure the Devuan project leads could consider in future
ways to bring them into the Devuan package ecosystem.

For those with time to invest, I would suggest the
following:

* determine a subset, those esssential services that, if supported,
would allow a user to get a usable base system:

* choose one or two best-of-breed init systems to work on,
and provide infrastructure for collecting contributions
for *all* init systems, even less popular ones.

With cheers for the volunteers,

--
Joel Roth