[kwlug-disc] What is all this about systemd?

[Hubert Chathi]

On Tue, 21 Oct 2014 12:14:41 -0400, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com> said:

> This is what he said:

> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5852295&cid=48188823

> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5852295&cid=48188887

I saw those, and they don't seem to be referring to Debian's
governance.  While some of the "policy wonks" that he refers to may be
part of Debian's governance, I don't see him as talking about a problem
with Debian's governance itself.

And his second message specifically denies that he's talking about the
systemd people (if you look at the parent message), and if I had to
guess based solely on those posts, his comment about "making [Debian] a
whore to Ubuntu" could be taken as an indication that he is talking
about the upstart people, despite him saying that he is beginning to be
wary of systemd.

>>> Something like UselessD takes what is good from systemd and removes
>>> what is bad.
>> 
>>> http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/
>> 
>> Yeah, I'm interested in seeing how some of the new init systems turn
>> out.  nosh is another one I'm interested in.
>> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwares/nosh.html

> The proper way is to have an init standard. An API for how daemons are
> started up, manage dependencies, and perhaps the syntax of config
> files (e.g. yaml or ini).

> Then implementation is up to the individual init systems, as long as
> they stick to the API and configuration file format.

> This has to be done in a way where daemons themselves do not require
> major surgery to implement that API. Rather an intermediate wrapper
> would do it, be it shell scripts, or upstart or system.

> This way, something like systemd can be easily swapped for something
> else.

> Wishful thinking, I know ...

Pretty much every init system has some sort of compatibility for sysv
init scripts.  If systemd becomes the dominant init system and everyone
writes unit files instead of init scripts, I'm sure that most of the
other init systems will grow the ability to parse unit files (or
whatever system becomes the de facto standard), at least to some degree.
So I don't think that it's wishful thinking, although it might take a
while to fully materialize.