Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: oldnet scripts splitting out from OpenRC

[Mike Frysinger]

On Wednesday 24 April 2013 13:23:23 William Hubbs wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 12:58:21PM -0400, Ian Stakenvicius wrote:
> > On 24/04/13 12:16 PM, William Hubbs wrote:
> > > it has been suggested that gentoo's oldnet scripts be split out
> > > into their own package separate from OpenRC so that they can be
> > > developed independently. I am looking at doing this for OpenRC
> > > 0.12, which I hope to release soon.
> > >
> > > This means when you emerge or upgrade to openrc-0.12, the net.*
> > > scripts will no longer be included. I am going to call the separate
> > > package that includes these scripts gentoo-oldnet.
> > >
> > > My plan is  to write a newsitem when OpenRC 0.12 is released
> > > telling users this and that they will have to emerge gentoo-oldnet
> > > to get the gentoo networking scripts or turn on the newnet (maybe
> > > I'll change this to net) use flag to get OpenRC's network scripts
> > > installed and put ewarns in the ebuild if this use flag is turned
> > > off.
> > >
> > > I feel that a newsitem and ewarns in the OpenRC ebuild cover live
> > > systems well. In a nutshell, users should pay attention to their
> > > news items and ewarns.
> > >
> > > On the other hand, some are suggesting that I should add a runtime
> > > dependency to OpenRC so that it pulls in gentoo-oldnet. Since
> > > OpenRC doesn't need gentoo-oldnet in order to run, I feel like this
> > > would be abusing dependencies.
> > >
> > > Does anyone have any thoughts?
> >
> > Current users should be able to do a -uDN and still have their
> > existing systems work as-is.  Whether you do this via a static
> > dependency or one controlled by a use flag (and be sure use flag
> > defaults would have oldnet installed by default) is up to you.
>
>  The issue is that OpenRC does not have any kind of dependency on
>  gentoo-oldnet at all. There will be a separate loopback script in OpenRC
>  so it is possible to run OpenRC on a system without the oldnet or
>  newnet scripts. In fact, this is a completely valid configuration.
>
> OpenRC doesn't "link" to gentoo-oldnet in any way, so there is no
> dependency.
>
> The way I read the dev manual [1], a newsitem and postinst messages are
> the way to go for somethinglike this.

it is reasonable to expect openrc updates to *not* break a system.  that means 
people shouldn't be required to read a news/postinst message to keep from 
killing things.

even then, a default Gentoo system should have networking support available by 
default.  our manuals assume this, and people shouldn't have to install a 
stage3 and then do `emerge gentoo-oldnet` just to have that happen.  so 
keeping a dependency in openrc (perhaps initially hard, or behind 
IUSE=+oldnet) makes sense.
-mike