Debian TC vote on init system coupling

Posted Feb 23, 2014 19:24 UTC (Sun) by AngryChris (guest, #74783)
In reply to: Debian TC vote on init system coupling by cesarb
Parent article: Debian TC vote on init system coupling

That's very true, yes, but I just foresee a situation much like in Ubuntu today, where Upstart has been the init system for years. I don't know what Ubuntu's policy is, but it looks like loose coupling to me. Much of the base operating system is brought up by Upstart jobs (mounting disks, starting the network, starting ttys, etc), but the services (postgresql, apache, etc) are all starting using sysvinit.

In fact, the only services my system starts that are started using Upstart jobs are jobs I wrote myself for 3rd party software that isn't distributed with Ubuntu (subsonic, ventrilo, Tiny Tiny RSS, etc).

While it's possible, I am sure, for maintainers to provide both systemd units and sysvinit scripts in their packages, loose coupling allows "path of least resistance" to take over and I believe that sysvinit scripts is all we're going to end up with for the most part. I think that writing that systemd unit is going to be left to the local administrator.

Debian TC vote on init system coupling

Posted Feb 23, 2014 19:33 UTC (Sun) by eean (subscriber, #50420) [Link] (3 responses)

Isn't the situation you describe in Ubuntu partly because of the status quo in Debian? It doesn't sound very ideal...

Debian TC vote on init system coupling

Posted Feb 23, 2014 21:40 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] (2 responses)

Given that upstart is Ubuntu native, it makes little sense that the upstream distribution hasn't done the job... It was also the init for several Fedora (and RHEL) versions. To me at least it looks like it was too hard to do right, given that in a short time most services got native systemd units.

Debian TC vote on init system coupling

Posted Feb 24, 2014 1:35 UTC (Mon) by eean (subscriber, #50420) [Link] (1 responses)

Well my point was that the upstream distribution for Ubuntu is Debian, which hasn't used Upstart. In the future, both Debian and Ubuntu will be using systemd.

Debian TC vote on init system coupling

Posted Feb 24, 2014 2:22 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

In this particular case it is Ubuntu who is upstream.

Debian TC vote on init system coupling

Posted Feb 23, 2014 22:08 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

I don't know what Ubuntu's policy is, but it looks like loose coupling to me.

To me it looks more like »Patching all the stuff we get from Debian to include Upstart jobs is a huge amount work for us few Ubuntu guys, so let's put it off for a while; the SysV init scripts will keep working in the meantime.«

It stands to reason that, if Debian had adopted Upstart as its default init system, eventually most of the Debian packages Ubuntu is re-using would have come with Upstart jobs, thus saving the Ubuntu people rather a lot of work. With the decision in favour of systemd, it was clear that this wasn't going to happen, so it made sense for Canonical to drop Upstart in favour of systemd, instead of ending up doing the work themselves.

I think that writing that systemd unit is going to be left to the local administrator.

However the coupling vote comes out, Debian package maintainers will most probably be encouraged by policy to adopt patches that add systemd unit files to their packages. There are people within Debian who are actively working on providing systemd unit files for other people's service packages. Now that systemd is slated to be the official default init we can expect this effort to gain further momentum, so it is safe to say that eventually most if not all packages that come with SysV init scripts today will also feature systemd unit files.