[Pkg-systemd-maintainers] Bug#732981: Bug#732981: Bug#732981: ExecStart et al should be capable of honouring PATH

[Michael Stapelberg]

Hi Ian,

Ian Jackson <ijackson at chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> Michael Stapelberg writes ("Re: [Pkg-systemd-maintainers] Bug#732981: ExecStart et al should be capable of honouring PATH"):
>> Hi Ian,
>> > Would you accept a patch to fix this problem in Debian's systemd (of
>> > course, I think it would be better if such a thing went upstream
>> > whether right away or eventually).
>>
>> No. Just like in our previous conversation in #732157 (the SIGSTOP
>> feature request), I am personally not at all interested in carrying any
>> significant features in Debian’s systemd package. Those should all go
>> upstream. My rule of thumb for this is: will people have to think “Ugh,
>> should this run on Debian? Then I need to do $x differently.” when
>> writing service files?
>
> Please reconsider, or alternatively try to get Debian policy changed.
> As matters stands it seems to me that policy would appear to imply the
> behaviour I'm requesting here.  Without it, the commands in systemd
> unit files cannot comply with policy.
I think you are reading a bit much into policy in this case :). The way
I read it, systemd unit files are not at all covered by this particular
section of the debian policy. I don’t personally feel the need to have
policy changed.

That being said, I’m happy to work on changing the wording and making
this more explicit, in case you insist.

> Tollef writes:
>> You could make the case for lots of other bits:
>
> That the goal (of honouring the system administrator's things in
> /usr/local) is incompletely achieved (either due to lack of effort, or
> due to difficulty coming up with good solutions) is not an excuse for
> failing to implement it when it's easy.
I am not convinced that it is easy to do this reliable in the case of
systemd, as outlined in the first reply. Furthermore, I don’t think
having some $PATH-like thing (it cannot be the real $PATH, because shell
is not involved) leads to more confusion than it’s worth. Where would
you even configure that? And even if we introduced an option for that
somewhere, we end up with another thing that is different from machine
to machine.

Anyhow, I think this discussion should really take place without the
middle man by now. As you can tell, the systemd maintainers in Debian
are not in favor of such a modification, so your best bet is to talk to
upstream directly. May I ask you to open a ticket at
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/ please? The product to select is “systemd”.

-- 
Best regards,
Michael