Debian votes on init systems

Another option is what I did when a similar thing that happened when upstreams for packages I maintained in Fedora refused to port to Python3: drop them from the distro. If they're important enough that those packages cause worry with that kind of response, then I guess you'll have to find a new upstream (in one way or another). This GR is about whether those patches to support alternate init systems is an RC bug or not (not supporting Python3 obviously is, init systems…well, that's what this vote is about, libc? even lower priority I would think).

If including the musl patch imposes any additional maintenance burden on the packager, then while musl isn't an official Debian port there's no absolute expectation that the maintainer would accept it - policy certainly doesn't require that they do. I'd expect many to be happy to carry small patches to make this easier, but it's not an obligation. For packages that actually rely on functionality that's in glibc but not elsewhere, things become more complicated. And, outside the current policy obligations, it's the same for non-systemd init support - in most cases there's a relatively small overhead caused by looking after it, but in other cases it's much more significant. Creating an expectation that core system components should be entirely replaceable is creating an expectation that package maintainers will take on additional work without benefiting the overwhelming majority of users.

I would not, in the general case, expect Debian package maintainers to accept and carry patches for musl support, any more than I would expect the upstream developers to do so.

This is because in the general case, the level of change required for musl support can range from "trivial one-line change" to "vendoring random chunks of glibc because critical non-optional functionality depends on glibc features that musl doesn't provide and have displayed unfriendliness towards the notion of being asked to provide".

> What are you talking about ? It's YOUR lot that wants a change in MY distro

So are you seriously saying that you single-handedly created and maintain Debian? Or perhaps you are saying that it was created solely for you?

> which was happily init-agnostic until some corporate know-better wanted to change all that worked very well for 1/2 century.

FYI, Linux is only 28 years old, and UNIX System V that all of this crap was derived is itself on ly 36 years old.

Debian is closer to init-agnostic now than it was before systemd was adopted as the default system initialization and service supervision system.

Back in wheezy (and presumably before), you had to deliberately break the invariants of the packaging system if you wanted to remove sysvinit, because sysvinit was Essential: yes.

> [...] MY distro, which was happily init-agnostic [...]

Pre-systemd Debian was init-agnostic in the same way Henry Ford allowed buyers of the Model T Ford to choose the color of their car.

Hi Ian (or possibly Debra)! I didn't know you had an anonymous user named Zolko on LWN.

Or maybe you didn't mean that Debian is literally your brainchild? Maybe you just mean that you're a long-time user? Well, guess what, a lot of people are. You're not alone.

Debian isn't your distribution any more than it's anyone else's. If you're a long-time Debian Developer you might possibly lay a bit more claim to it than others, but even so, it's not yours. The people who do the work gets to decide what direction Debian heads in. We have, and we picked systemd; both for pragmatical reasons (it's good to standardise) but also for technical reasons (it's simply the best option available).

Just because sysvinit is enough for your particular use-cases doesn't mean that it's sufficient for everyone.

This is free software. You're free to fork. Of course there's already been one attempt at a fork of Debian for the sole purpose of removing systemd. You could give it a try.