:: Re: [DNG] OpenRC and Devuan
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Author: Steve Litt
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] OpenRC and Devuan
On Wed, 04 May 2016 06:47:06 +0000
Noel Torres <envite@???> wrote:

> Steve Litt <slitt@???> escribió:
>
> > On Mon, 2 May 2016 22:15:44 -1000
> > Joel Roth <joelz@???> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> The problem with supporting multiple init systems is that
> >> there is an init script for each service that has to be
> >> ported or rewritten.
> [...]
> > It's a documentation task. If we had a wiki upon which users could
> > write their successful init scripts/run scripts/EpochConfigs etc,
> > this task would be removed from upstream developers, who never
> > should have had this responsibility in the first place.
>
> We can use a wiki for collecting this, but the scripts should be in
> packages, and should be installed, so maybe this wiki might help
> creating bug reports for the maintainers to just add these files to
> their packages.
>
> It is not conceivable that a user that wants a
> different-than-default init system must copy scripts from the wiki
> while the machine can not yet access the wiki as it is still being
> installed!


Oh yeah, that issue :-)

I think the only daemons you really need in an installer are the
gettys, sshd, wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd. And you'll probably want
the display manager too. Those obviously must be included in packages.
The more obscure stuff can exist first on the Wiki, and gradually be
incorporated into the packages after they've been proven correct.

What I was trying to do is shelter the poor maintainers from having a
brand new job thrown at them, and having to learn about every init
system out there (conspicuously excluding systemd).

At this point let me say this: It's waaaaay premature to speak of any
change in the default init system. What I'm personally speaking of is
alternate inits you can lay down on Devuan, for that minority of people
who care what their init system is (as long as it's not an entangled
monolith).

Let's talk about a person who is partial enough to a specific init
system to alt-init Devuan. Their system installation is sysvinit, and
then later they install OpenRC or runit or s6 or Epoch. Let's take
runit as an example, as it's the only one I know a lot about. They
install the runit package, which comes with run scripts for tty1-tty6,
sshd, wpa_supplicant, dhcpcd, ntpd, httpd. Then, as they need software
without included run scripts, they write the run scripts. Because
they're enthusiasts of that init system, they probably do it well. Then
they put the run scripts on the wiki, others test them, and over time
they become tested enough to go in the runit package. Nobody has an
undue amount of work, and nobody's working on something they don't give
a flying flamingo about.

Over time each init will end up with init scripts/run scripts,
EpochConfs for lots and lots of daemons. Maybe at some point the
scripts for a given init system will be complete enough that they can
be transferred to the daemon's package, but I don't see a need to rush
that.

Anyway, none of this is top priority: We're doing just fine with
sysvinit, and the people who *really* want to alt-init already know how
to do so, with or without Devuan packages to help them. Let those
people do the pioneering work.

SteveT

Steve Litt
April 2016 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21