The vote isn't over yet

Posted Jan 4, 2014 2:04 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: The vote isn't over yet by dag-
Parent article: Positions forming in the Debian init system discussion

> At this point I really would like to see Debian just pick something other than systemd. Just to see how it would play out and what predictions would hold true.
Yeah, it also would be interesting to do this with the nuclear war.

> PS Why wasn't a "portable systemd" project never considered, much like the "portable openssh" project ? The situation seems quite similar, upstream's use-case vs portability.
Systemd depends on a large number of Linux-specific functionality that simply doesn't exist on other systems.

The vote isn't over yet

Posted Jan 4, 2014 2:33 UTC (Sat) by dag- (guest, #30207) [Link]

> Yeah, it also would be interesting to do this with the nuclear war.

You're quite the pessimist :-)

The difference being that Debian wouldn't be destroyed by keeping the existing (or a better) init system, it may merely impact its pace and/or uptake. We don't know in what way, which makes it more interesting. Would a decision impact the userbase ? Would there be a large outcry ? A schism ? Would it increase ties with Ubuntu, alienate Debian derivatives ?

But I can say this because it won't impact me, unlike a nuclear war.

The vote isn't over yet

Posted Jan 4, 2014 12:55 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (3 responses)

> Systemd depends on a large number of Linux-specific functionality that simply doesn't exist on other systems.

well, actually... ;)

there is no reason at all why the "linux-specific functionality" (not That large after all) couldn't be implemented in the other systems (IIRC someone is implementing cgroupfs for the Hurd, how hard can it be to implement it over FreeBSD?)

The vote isn't over yet

Posted Jan 4, 2014 13:32 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

It's probably less of a technical problem than a social one; you would have to get it past the actual FreeBSD developers, who historically have been less than enthusiastic about taking on board stuff that originates from Linux.

The vote isn't over yet

Posted Jan 4, 2014 14:54 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (1 responses)

Considering its purpose would be "to run Debian GNU/kFreeBSD", the patch/module to kFreeBSD could be maintained by Debian if upstream refused it...

The vote isn't over yet

Posted Jan 4, 2014 15:21 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

That would also conveniently put the work where it belongs, namely onto the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD maintainers, who could then be scratching their own itch instead of forcing the rest of the project to scratch it for them by disconnecting Debian from where the rest of Linux seems to be going.