[arch-general] RFC: OpenRC as init system for Arch

[Patrick Lauer]

On 04/26/12 16:49, Nicolas Sebrecht wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The 25/04/12, Patrick Lauer wrote:
>
>> As an alternative to the One Process For Everything I'd like to ask you to evalute OpenRC as an init system for Arch Linux.
> <...>
>
>> While Gentoo is by far the largest user it's definitely not the only one
>> - there are the direct derivatives (Sabayon, pentoo, funtoo,
>> sysrescuecd, tinhat, ...) and some "foreign" users (Alpine, a debian
>> derivative, uses OpenRC)
> Alpine is highly dedicated to small systems with few physical resources
> which makes the reference not much relevant.
Well, it's just one example of a non-gentoo-derived user. Shows that
it's highly portable and not twisted towards one specific confiuguration.
>
>> Should you decide to switch (or just evaluate if switching is possible /
>> makes sense) you'll get full support from us in migrating init scripts
>> and figuring out all the nontrivial changes. Just visit us on IRC (
>> #openrc on irc.freenode.net), send us a mail ( openrc at gentoo.org ) or
>> meet us for a beer or two.
>>
>> Thanks for your consideration,
>>
>> Patrick Lauer
>>
>> Gentoo Developer, OpenRC co-maintainer
> I wouldn't expect anything else from a OpenRC maintainer to support his
> tool to be used on other platforms. :-)
>
> But to be fair, you should say that the future of OpenRC is NOT certain
> in Gentoo at least, and as a consequence in all of the forked projects.
Nyet. Future very certain. Most of us will stick with OpenRC, and do
whatever is needed to keep it working.

>
> Please all, take a look at:
> - http://marc.info/?l=gentoo-dev&m=130929913506375&w=4
> - https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=373219
> - http://marc.info/?l=gentoo-dev&m=132538362810246&w=4
>
> Gentoo might make systemd the default init system in the future.
Nein. That'd be a proper schism that will make the exherbo split look
like happy sunshine happy happy.

Now that systemd upstream has assimilated udev (which confuses nicely,
but their decision in the end) there's even work to get rid of that
silly udev, err, systemd-udev, err, systemd dependency. The harder some
people try to force their ideas on others the faster we get replacements
to route around the damage.
>  Nobody
> can say if and when this could heppen but this is clearly possible for
> OpenRC to become a Gentoo init system _alternative_.
Maybe there will be a Gentoo fork with systemd as default. Maybe systemd
will be better supported than it is now. But we've invested too much
energy into a surprise-free solution that "Just Works" and isn't 100k
LoC with almost no comments to just switch to something that is a lot
harder to manage and doesn't even have all the same features.
(Sidenote: if anyone ever claims the kernel is bad code - let them read
systemd or upstart. It gives a good perspective. Kernel is about the
best code you can find for bedside reading)
(And another sidenote: we have almost no control over systemd upstream,
so ... no thanks. If they decide to integrate syslog into ... oh wait
... uhm, if they decide to integrate consolekit ... eerrrrr, if they ...
uhm ... add ... an X server? I hope I didn't give anyone a silly idea
now, but that'd be bad.
I have some machines that boot with <64MB memory used, I would like for
things to stay small and efficient)

>
> This is why I think that switching to OpenRC *now* would be wrong.
>
I think not switching now would be wrong, but in the end it's your loss
and not mine ;)

Have fun,

Patrick