Bug#747741: systemd-sysv, systemd: please clairfy /sbin/init choice in package description

[Jan Braun]

Source: systemd
Version: 204-8
Severity: normal

Hi,
I just spent way too much time cursing the polkit -> libpam-systemd ->
systemd dependence that seemed to want to switch a computer I admin to
boot systemd, and debugging and trying to find ways around that. I only
understood what was happening when I found
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2014/05/msg00576.html
, which proves I was not the only one confused this way.

Please make the package descriptions of systemd and systemd-sysv mention
that the latter switches /sbin/init to systemd, not the former. Right
now systemd's description says nothing specific, and systemd-sysv's says
"manual page and links for replacing sysvinit", which was not at all
clear to me.
Of course, systemd's README.Debian explains the situtation, but I can't
read that without installing systemd, which I'm certainly not going to
do while I think it replaces the init system on a machine I don't have
hands on. So it really needs to be in the package description.

I suggest adding something like the following to systemd's description:
"This package does/contains foo* , but will not actually boot your
computer using systemd.[ Install the systemd-sysv package for that.]"

And change systemd-sysv's to something like
"This package provides the manual pages and links needed for systemd to
replace sysvinit, including /sbin/init, and thus causes your computer to
boot using systemd."

Thanks,
    Jan

*) I obviously still don't understand what the purpose of the package
"systemd" is. If it doesn't cause systemd services to be run, why is it
a dependency of libpam-systemd, and if it does, then why is systemd-shim
needed? But I don't really care either, as long as it doesn't mess with
init then I'll pretend it's just a weird library dependency of hplip.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (800, 'testing'), (550, 'unstable'), (10, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.13-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
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