[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] startpar support for upstart

[Steve Langasek]

Hi Kel,

On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 07:55:52AM +1000, Kel Modderman wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:16:01 AM Steve Langasek wrote:
> > Hi folks,

> > Pursuant to bug #591791 against Debian Policy about permitting alternate
> > init systems in Debian, I've prepared a patch against sysvinit which would
> > make startpar aware that a given job is implemented as an upstart job
> > instead of a SysV init script and that startpar should defer to upstart to
> > satisfy the dependency.

> > This enables insserv/startpar-based dependency boot to be used for sysvinit
> > in conjunction with upstart as /sbin/init and native upstart jobs as
> > dependencies, and is the first step towards having upstart be genuinely
> > usable on Debian.  It also rolls back the previous /lib/init/upstart-job
> > approach, which never worked right with startpar due to the inability to
> > express dependency information.  As a result, packages shipping upstart jobs
> > should now ship real init scripts in parallel (per the policy bug
> > discussion), which means some changes to debhelper are wanted before this
> > goes into effect.

> Does this mean that the upstart code (to do with /lib/init/upstart-job) in
> insserv should be removed alongside this new development?

Yes, we would eventually phase that out in favor of the handling on the
startpar side.  We would have to keep /lib/init/upstart-job around for a
while until no more packages in Ubuntu are using it, but the insserv changes
for upstart-job could be dropped (since /lib/init/upstart-job never
implemented the interface insserv was expecting, anyway).

> > Would any of the Debian sysvinit maintainers care to comment on this patch?
> > I can't help but notice the 12 consecutive NMUs to the package.  I don't
> > mind making this number 13, but would appreciate feedback if there's any to
> > be had.
> 
> Given the current activity of the maintainers an NMU is the only option.
> 
> Comments:
> * genarally happy with this approach - it is simple, whereas the
> /lib/init/upstart-job concept was somewhat of a blocker trying to
> achieve very difficult things that noone in their right mind wants to
> throw time at

Yep :)

> * not sure the copyright statement of startpar.c should be changed

It's a non-trivial patch, so that's correct at least for the moment.  I
don't know if Novell will want copyright assignment for this patch; I'll ask
them about it as soon as I figure out where the correct upstream location is
for this code :) (debian/copyright of sysvinit doesn't mention it)

Thanks for the comments!

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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