Re: [gentoo-dev] Making systemd more accessible to "normal" users

[Michał Górny]

On Thu, 9 May 2013 00:21:53 +0800
Ben de Groot <yngwin@g.o> wrote:

> On 8 May 2013 23:49, Fabio Erculiani <lxnay@g.o> wrote:
> > On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:39 PM, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
> > <chithanh@g.o> wrote:
> >> Ben de Groot schrieb:
> >>> On 1 May 2013 18:04, Fabio Erculiani <lxnay@g.o> wrote:
> >>>> It looks like there is some consensus on the effort of making systemd
> >>>> more accessible, while there are problems with submitting bugs about
> >>>> new systemd units of the sort that maintainers just_dont_answer(tm).
> >>>> In this case, I am just giving 3 weeks grace period for maintainers to
> >>>> answer and then I usually go ahead adding units (I'm in systemd@ after
> >>>> all).
> >>> In my opinion you should not be asking maintainers to add systemd
> >>> units to their packages. They most likely do not have systems on which
> >>> they can test these, and very few users would need them anyway. I
> >>> would think it is better to add them to a separate systemd-units
> >>> package.
> >>
> >> Note that a similar thing is already done with the selinux policy packages.
> >
> > Upstreams will _DO_ ship systemd units at some point in future. It's a
> > completely different thing. Don't compare oranges to apples.
>
> Where upstreams ship systemd units, I don't think there is any issue.
> The problem is you are asking Gentoo maintainers to add unit files
> that upstream is not shipping. In this case we should test and
> maintain these ourselves, which is an additional burden for very
> little (if any) gain.
>
> >>
> >> Mostly the complaints against adding systemd units are that it would
> >> unnecessarily clutter non-systemd installs. Users who complain are told
> >> to set INSTALL_MASK but that is somewhat unwieldy.
> >
> > Cluttering a system by just installing 4kb files? The council has
> > spoken. If you don't like the decision, I am sorry.
> > I can say the same for init scripts, they are freaking cluttering my
> > system and they're all over.
> > Or perhaps all these man pages, I don't need man pages locally but
> > still most ebuilds do install them. What do we do?
> >
> > Let's be serious here.
>
> You are forgetting that OpenRC is, and will remain for the foreseeable
> future, the default on Gentoo. Any systemd related files are
> completely useless for most of our users. And those of us who consider
> systemd a cancer do not want to see such files installed at all.
>
> Gentoo is about choice and configurability. This means we will
> accommodate both sides: so those who want to use an alternative init
> system can do so, and those who want to avoid it can also keep doing
> so.

It is quite likely that OpenRC will start supporting unit files soon.
Then in many cases we will be able to strip down this to just one init
format which would satisfy both init systems.

Of course, people who are thoughtlessly removing all systemd files
for the sake of 4 KiB will suffer then.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny