[arch-dev-public] [RFC] Finally dropping initscripts and rc scripts

[Tom Gundersen]

Hi guys,

Several devs have been asking me to officially drop initscripts, so I
thought I'd bring it here.

As per our announcement [0], the rc scripts have been unsupported for
one month now, and we have slowly started removing them (which means
stuff will have started breaking for people still using sysvinit).

Despite several people showing interest in taking over the rc scripts
and initscripts and keeping it going, nothing has come of it in terms
of packages or announcements, so it appears to me that the necessary
manpower/motivation is not there (as I mentioned before [1], a
replacement should really have been in place before the end of
December to provide continuity).

To make our communication with our users clear I suggest we drop
initscripts from our repositories, (re)announce that sysvinit is now
unsupported and start dropping the rc scripts from the individual
packages whenever they are rebuilt.

This is unfortunate for users stuck on very old kernels. However, I
don't think it is responsible to give the impression that we are
supporting an init system that is not getting any kind of testing, and
with no one to take care of it going forward.

Cheers,

Tom

[0]: <https://www.archlinux.org/news/end-of-initscripts-support/>
[1]: <https://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2013-January/024347.html>