Re: [gentoo-dev] The future of sys-apps/openrc in Gentoo

[Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek@gentoo.org>]

2010/7/5 Olivier Crête <tester@gentoo.org>:
> On Sun, 2010-07-04 at 18:15 -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
>> which is trivial to fix and anyone with commit privs could have done.  it
>> certainly doesnt warrant a paniced "the sky is falling" message.
>
> I think this is a great occasion to dump our stupid custom crap and
> switch to SystemD, PolicyKit, NetworkManager, etc. Anyone with half a
> brain already dropped our stuff. And the lack of use of modern tools is
> the reason I don't use Gentoo on my work computer anymore.
>

What you are saying makes sense for desktop users since they will
likely already have consolekit/policykit/nm-applet installed, and
hence using NetworkManager for all network management makes sense.
However, this makes very little sense for people who install gentoo on
servers. Requiring these things of them would be a disservice on our
part (we're not fedora/ubuntu). And there is the issue that
NetworkManager (aka NM) does not have any command line tools to
control it (bring individual interfaces on/off, etc). cnetworkmanager
exists, but it's third-party application, and I don't think it's that
widely used/tested.

From what I can see, we have three options:
(a) Make our existing openrc network code + openrc configuration files
work with systemd, and move to systemd by default
(b) Make systemd work with openrc+NM configuration files[1], make NM
work w/o PK/CK[2], add command line tools to NM, and move to systemd
by default.
(c) Support systemd as an alternative init system for use by desktop users.

I'd go with (c), personally, but if enough people are interested, they
can pursue any of these options.


1. There's an ongoing GSoC project in Gentoo to make NM work with
openrc's configuration files. It is proceeding quite successfully
thanks to the excellent work of Mu Qiao.
2, PK == polkit, CK == consolekit

-- 
~Nirbheek Chauhan

Gentoo GNOME+Mozilla Team