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

[Rahul Sundaram]

Patrice Dumas wrote:
> 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.

Right. I think then we are in agreement on that. The tricky question is 
what is the point at we allow a new init system into the stable 
repository. What % of services should be covered? We need to have some 
policies to ensure that a user doesn't end up with unbootable systems 
just because they install a new package. Last time I played with initng 
it required configuration changes and it had boot options to fall back 
to using the default init system.  We need policies to ensure that 
similar things are in place for any other init systems we allow into the 
stable repo.

> 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.

We have lots of end users who don't file bug reports when they come 
across brokeness. I haven't always done it methologically myself. 
Sometimes a workaround is just easier. I don't think that's free riding. 
Just different priorities.

> 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.

If you are advocating for alternative init systems I hope you take 
sometime to do that.

Rahul