[arch-general] initscripts change

[Tom Gundersen]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 3:30 AM, Carl Mueller <2009 at carlm.e4ward.com> wrote:
> Why change the modules array in initscripts?  I always read that Arch was
> great because almost all configurations were done in one file, namely
> rc.conf.

There will be an announcement going into the details, and this has
already been discussed on this list a few days ago, but let me just
clarify the important points:

The great thing about rc.conf is that it does all the Arch-specific
configurations. There are lots and lots of other configuration files
in /etc/ that are owned by their respective packages.

As upstream projects have evolved, they have gained their own
configuration files with the same (or equivalent) functionality as
some of the things in rc.conf. Blacklisting of modules is one such
example.

What we are doing now is to avoid this duplication, and directing
users to use the configurations that upstream (in this case
module-init-tools) intended.

Why:

This will reduce the likelihood of Arch-specific bugs.

It will greatly simplify working with upstream on bug reports, as we
will be running 'vanilla' packages.

We will be able to delete a lot of code from our initscripts, udev and
mkinitcpio packages.

It will speed up your boot (on my system I gained about 2.5 sec, which
is about 10%, but YMMV).

If you encounter any bugs with the packages in testing, please do not
hesitate to let us know.

Cheers,

Tom