Re: [gentoo-dev] Questions about SystemD and OpenRC

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 5:31 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 11:24 PM, Greg KH <gregkh@g.o> wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 09, 2012 at 03:47:19PM -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
>>> On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 3:24 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <caneko@×××××.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > I agree with Greg Kroah-Hartman: I actually like (and want) a
>>> > "vertically integrated, tightly coupled way of doing things".
>>>
>>> Well, if you completely agreed with him you wouldn't be running Gentoo
>>> (or Debian, or other general-purpose distros).  He advocates that
>>> ordinary users should use more purpose-driven distros, where all of
>>> this stuff is less of an issue.
>>
>> That is not what I said, or mean at all.
>>
>> Given that I'm a Gentoo developer, and have been for a very long time, I
>> find it very strange that you would think otherwise.
>
> I did clarify my post in a reply, linking to your post and of course
> stating that you could clarify.  Your words were:   "I just don't
> think it can be done well, sorry, which is why I strongly recommend
> tightly-coupled distros for desktops for anyone (like Fedora or
> openSUSE or Ubuntu), and Debian or Gentoo only for servers or embedded
> systems where you know exactly what you are putting together, and why
> you are doing it that way."
>
> I'm not a big fan of putting words in mouths, so if I misread that
> than I apologize.  In any case, I can't really argue much with that
> statement as-is, although I'd probably carve out an additional
> exception for enthusiasts or those who otherwise like to tinker under
> the hood.
>
> If you want strong vertical integration, you probably will never get
> as much of it with Gentoo as you might get with a tightly-coupled
> distro.

You can get as much vertical integration with Gentoo as with any other
distro. The problem (and I think this is the point Greg is trying to
make) is that it will be harder (not impossible, just harder) if most
of Gentoo developers really believe that every single possible
combination of hardware, software, init systems, and even OS kernels
should be supported.

I myself believe that any Gentoo dev should support whatever the hell
s/he wants to; I'm just interested in that if some of us want vertical
integration, it should be easier to get. Right now every single Gentoo
install from the official tree has OpenRC installed, because is pulled
in by baselayout, and OpenRC also pulls sysvinit. And I'm not talking
about some text files (even if they are executables) in /etc/init.d;
I'm talking about executable binaries and libraries in every Gentoo
install, even if the user has systemd, and they don't use
OpenRC/sysvinit at all. Not to mention that they need to compile both
packages if they ever upgrade (which doesn't happen that much, I
agree).

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México