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

[William Hubbs]

On Thu, May 09, 2013 at 12:21:53AM +0800, Ben de Groot 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.

As was said above, the distro policy is that we always install
configuration files. This is how we handle logrotate and xinetd among
other things.

I would like to see the logrotate, xinet and systemd use flags used for
this, but to get that to happen we need to change the policy -- you do
that by putting this on the agenda for the council.

If we do this, I would rather change it across the board and not just
for systemd. So, this would mean adding an openrc use flag to every
ebuild that installs openrc init scripts and using it to control that as
well.

> 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.
 
The argument in the past has been that we aren't taking away the choice
and configurability since we have INSTALL_MASK.

> >>
> >> A separate package for the unit file would solve this problem nicely.
> >
> > No, it will generate a gazillion of other problems. Like conflicts
> > arising every single day, just to name one.
>
> I think you are making the problem bigger than it is. Are there really
> that many packages that need a unit file, but upstream doesn't ship
> them yet, and many that are in the process of changing that? Either
> way, it should be an easy fix for systemd enthusiasts.
 
Having separate packages for systemd units that we ship would be pretty
unwieldy. I can see advantages to it, but I can definitely also see
disadvantages. This same thinking could apply to OpenRC init scripts as
well.

William