sysvinit VS initng VS upstart VS launchd (Was: Future New Init for FC7?)

[Patrice Dumas]

On Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 08:02:51PM +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> 
> The problem is that users wouldn't know that the init system they are 
> installing wont work with several packages because these don't provide 
> the init scripts that work with the alternative init system they just 
> installed. If basic integration was not done, the alternative init 
> system would result in non-functional packages, crashes or worse non 
> booting systems.

In my opinion, a user who installs an alternate init system should
know about it and understand what happens if it doesn't work. Of course
the init system should basically work, otherwise it shouldn't be in the
stable branch but I don't think that we should wait for all packages
to be covered by the init system before letting it go in the stable
branch.

> Why not? If I was a end user I would definitely expect any package in 
> Fedora to work with the rest of the packages in the repository properly. 
> I would expect the project to put in the necessary checks to ensure that 
> I get functional software.

Some packages need some work before they work, daemons need to be
configured in general. In my opinion it is similar for a new init
system. It should work for most of the packages, but for packages less
used the user may have to do the init configuration himself.

> You are expecting end users to investigate all the potential issues 
> before they install a package. I think that's unreasonable. 

I am not expecting end users to investigate all the potential issues,
but know basically how it works and how it is configured if it is not
the default system.

> Maybe 
> expecting software to just work is idealistic but how is it ever free 
> riding?

What I am trying to say is that a user who expect new init systems to
work perfectly and isn't using it to help ameliorating it is not 
doing the right thing.

> >Ok, we could have guidelines, like what I suggest above, but just saying
> >we use only one init system is wrong.
> 
> I didn't suggest that. Propose the guidelines first and get them 
> approved in place before getting alternative init systems into stable 
> branches. This has potential for a lot of mess otherwise. If it's just 
> for devel branch that's fine.

I am not very knowledgable with init systems. Maybe I could come with
something, but I have a lot of other fedora related tasks in the queue
with higher precedence.

--
Pat