[arch-dev-public] Clarity about initscripts and systemd status

[Pierre Schmitz]

Hi all,

as systemd is now our default initsystem the current status of
initscripts is a little vague. The problem is not the initscripts
package itself but rc.d files and support in other packages. It is
unrealistic to think we can support two different init systems. Testing
on both systems is too much hassle and we already see packages that
require systemd or are configured to use it by default.

We never announced if and when using initscripts will get unsupported.
Users don't know when they should migrate to systemd. I assume that
initscripts based system will run into more and more issues over time;
things will slowly fall apart. Ir will also be unnecessary hard for
users to maintain an initscripts repo outside the official repos.

Therefor we should define some dates when initscripts are no longer
supported and rc.d (and maybe conf.d) scripts will be removed from
packages. Random example:

* Publish an announcement with the said dates and a link to a migration
guide
* Support for initscripts can be dropped e.g. end of December. After
that packages may drop support; but not before.
* rc.d scripts and other related files should be removed by end of
January. This makes it easier for third party repos to provide a package
containing all the rc scripts. Similar to what we had before systemd got
officially supported.

What do you think?

Greetings,

Pierre

-- 
Pierre Schmitz, https://pierre-schmitz.com