[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#546401: sysvinit/sysv-rc drops support for /etc/rc.boot

[Craig Sanders]

On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 10:57:36AM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> I gave this some more thought, and have a proposal for a way forward
> to reduce surprises and confusion.
> 
> We can reintroduce the rc.boot feature for a few more years, announce
> a deadline when it go away on debian-announce@, get the FAQ updated to
> state this, and update the init.d/rc code and the rc.boot(5) manual
> page to mention when this feature is going away.  The deadline could
> be 2-5 years in the future.

i agree it should be restored.

but i don't see any reason why it ever needs to be removed.

those who don't use it can just ignore it. it's not like a couple of
lines of shell code in /etc/init.d/rc is going to cause anyone any
problems or contribute significantly to bloat.

i notice that /etc/rc.local is still supported by the initscripts
package, and that's far less useful than /etc/rc.boot because it's just
a single script, not a directory.


> An alternative is to decide to keep this feature, reintroduce it and
> update the code and manual page to mention that this is only for local
> administrators and should not be used by packages.

makes more sense to me.  that's pretty much what it has been for the
last 10+ years anyway.


> I must admit I am surprised to discover that someone still depend on
> /etc/rc.boot, 10 years after it was declared obsolete.

given that there's no reasonable substitute, it's hardly surprising.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>