[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] A wish for help with Bug#765803 On automatic init system switching on upgrade

[Svante Signell]

On Fri, 2014-11-21 at 12:59 +0000, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
> Svante Signell dixit:
> 
> >Issue a warning: You are about to switch init system, do you want that?
> >yes) continue
> >no) Install sysvinit-core (and if needed systemd-shim): Is that
> 
> This is all not technically possible, and rather silly.
> 
> A debconf warning, at priority medium (if CTTE decides that automatic
> init system switches are ok for wheezy→jessie upgrades) or critical
> (if it decides they are not ok), in the systemd-sysv package for when
> it detects an upgrade from wheezy, is the best we can probably do.

Problem is that the ctte does not consider this issue unless there is a
technically feasible solution available.
You mention systemd-sysv, I was talking about the new init package.
What's wrong with modifying that package?

> I’d be totally content with a warning like that, plus the method to
> install (both d-i and debootstrap) jessie without systemd. (Actually,
> the debootstrap profiles minbase and buildd should omit the init sy‐
> stem completely. We could let the default profile install systemd by
> means of priority and alternate Depends (already the case), add a new
> “sysvinit” profile, and change all other profiles to remove systemd
> and sysvinit too.) I’d be even happy if this can be done in sid, as
> we can always build d-i from that ourselves (in fact, I did that for
> $orkplace because the “monolith” d-i image (which is, or used to be,
> not built by default) is much more reliable, though less featureful,
> plus I could add mksh and jupp to d-i that way).

A solution in sid has much more time to be discussed and mature.

> Remember, wheezy is frozen. We cannot touch that, and anything doing
> more than that would need to run inside (unmodifed, from CD-ROM in‐
> stalled) wheezy, before the dist-upgrade begins (once it’s started,
> you cannot interrupt it without trashing the system state; I have
> experience with a package whose prerm always exits false; it mails
> the admins to fix the system manually now).

So you are saying that adding a debconf prompt to the new init package
is not possible. Where to have such a test then, apt/aptitude, before
starting a dist-upgrade??