BoF Protocol

[Erich Schubert]

Hi,
> > The consensus on wether scripts are generated at build or install time
> > isn't very clear. Does "workstation side" mean the install time generation?

We had some discussion on that on the list, too. I think the argument
"adding support for a new init system and/or fixing a bug in the
generation script must not require a rebuild of all packages" was
quite convincing.
If we generate them at package installation time, maintainers can put
a "update-init-scripts --force foobar" into their postinst when
upgrading from a 'bad' version.

> > Regarding the features that should be supported, while I agree that
> > "restart" can easily be done by stop+start, reload should be supported
> > wherever possible. Be it by specifying a signal (which probably needs a

I in general agree with you on that one.
However, to get the project going I'd start with a subset of the
features; so I'd go with supporting restart=start+stop and
reload=sighup or start+stop only for the first version.
Once we have converted some packages over we'll probably have a
clearer vision on the requirements.
Things like 'rndc' for bind or 'apache2ctl graceful' would of course
be important to support at some point. But it's (to me) not yet clear
whether we need to allow full shell snippets for the restart/reload
actions, of if maybe a single command is sufficient.

SysV-style shell init suffers from one mayor issue: it expects all
services to background and take care of their own respawning.
Newer init systems are designed around service monitoring, so they can
take appropriate measures when a services fails (and restart it, maybe
even restart dependent services).
This is the main point we need to work on, getting these two paradigms
into the same meta-init system.