Demoting "init" to Priority: important

[Josh Triplett]

Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
> as written earlier[1] I would like to demote the "init" package from
> Priority: required & Essential: yes to Priority: important.
> 
> This needs at least a change to the provider of update-rc.d/invoke-rc.d:
> these two programs are called in maintainer scripts and should probably
> be provided by an essential package[2]. This means moving the Essential:
> yes bit from "init" to "sysv-rc"; as sysv-rc is already pseudo-essential
> this should be no real issue.
> 
> Do we need any other changes in order to demote "init"?

Personally, I'd prefer not to see sysv-rc become essential, and over
time I'm hoping it can eventually stop being pseudo-essential either.
It doesn't make sense for a package built from the sysvinit source
package to be essential or pseudo-essential on a system not running
sysvinit, and the utilities in question only need to exist on a system
that supports init scripts.  (Similarly, there's an ongoing effort to
drop dependencies on the "initscripts" package.)  In any case, as long
as those programs are still needed, they should likely go into
init-system-helpers or similar.

Also:
>  [2] I'm not opposed to changing that, but doing so probably requires
>      changing all packages providing init scripts.

Probably, though I'd still like to see that.  But I suspect 95% of this
could be handled by changing debhelper and triggering rebuilds.  For
that matter, the vast majority of update-rc.d invocations could probably
be replaced with a simple dpkg trigger; with some care, so could
invoke-rc.d.

- Josh Triplett