Debian votes on init systems

Posted Dec 7, 2019 4:52 UTC (Sat) by mgb (guest, #3226)
In reply to: Debian votes on init systems by mjg59
Parent article: Debian votes on init systems

> That argument is equivalent to saying no serious developer would throw away 98% of their potential user base by depending on glibc, and yet.

And yet we code to various widely supported C and C++ standards, not glibc.

Debian votes on init systems

Posted Dec 7, 2019 5:36 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (8 responses)

Try rebuilding everything against musl and see how many failures you get.

Debian votes on init systems

Posted Dec 7, 2019 6:24 UTC (Sat) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link] (6 responses)

> Try rebuilding everything against musl and see how many failures you get.

We use various compilers and library implementations and operating systems to make sure our code is portable.

Nobody codes to systemd - it's a moving target that nobody but RedHat can ever hope to keep up with and to do so would be to throw away 98%+ of our potential user base.

Debian votes on init systems

Posted Dec 7, 2019 6:54 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (5 responses)

Plenty of code uses glibc functionality that isn't present in other C libraries. It's clear that many people writing applications for Linux don't care about non-Linux operating systems, which (by your metric) means they're throwing away 98%+ of their potential user base.

Debian votes on init systems

Posted Dec 7, 2019 7:25 UTC (Sat) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link] (4 responses)

What is this Linux-only non-portable non-system-software APPLICATION that your Mom, Brother, or Cat would hate to do without?

Debian votes on init systems

Posted Dec 7, 2019 7:41 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Amazon? Google? Facebook?

Debian votes on init systems

Posted Dec 7, 2019 7:45 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

All serious application authors are writing multi-platform applications that your Mom, Brother or Cat would hate to do without?

Debian votes on init systems

Posted Dec 9, 2019 19:49 UTC (Mon) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

Nice shift of goalposts there!

In any case, there's loads of very specific software that's critical. For any (most?) big companies (especially the ones that have been around for a while) it's often the same: Loads of systems, loads of interdependencies, etc. Enough stuff that is entirely Windows specific, plus various Linux specific, plus various systemd-specific, etc. You could go on forever basically. It's messy, everyone knows it should be better, but hey, big company..

Debian votes on init systems

Posted Dec 9, 2019 19:53 UTC (Mon) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

In all the time I've been aware of their comments on the subject, mgb has never displayed the slightest interest in a fair and reasonable conversation about systemd.

Debian votes on init systems

Posted Dec 7, 2019 9:00 UTC (Sat) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

In case anyone wants to work on the Debian port to musl:

https://wiki.debian.org/HelmutGrohne/rebootstrap