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

[Rahul Sundaram]

Patrice Dumas wrote:
> 
> I may be wrong, but I don't think that any user will chose another init 
> system than the default init system unknowingly.

The problem is not that the user would unknowingly install a different 
init system (They could install any packages without understanding it 
but that is not a init system specific issue so we needn't discuss that 
in this thread).

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.

> But I don't think the users have expectations about non-default init 
> systems.

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.

  If they have wrong expectations, don't do proper investigation
> before changing such an important piece of fedora from the default, 
> change defaults without being knowledgable enough, I don't think these
> are users we should care that much about. In any case they will
> certainly be free riders, if not worse.

You are expecting end users to investigate all the potential issues 
before they install a package. I think that's unreasonable. Maybe 
expecting software to just work is idealistic but how is it ever free 
riding?

> 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.

Rahul