Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: making sysvinit optional

[Mike Gilbert <floppym@gentoo.org>]

On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 11:02 PM William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Systemd already has IUSE=+sysv-utils which has a similar function:
> > [-      ] sysv-utils
> >     sys-apps/systemd: Install sysvinit compatibility symlinks and
> >     manpages for init, telinit, halt, poweroff, reboot, runlevel, and
> >     shutdown
>
> Actually, I like the name sysv-utils for this use flag; that seems to
> describe better what it does.
>
> > RDEPEND="sysv-utils? ( !sys-apps/sysvinit )
> >          !sysv-utils? ( sys-apps/sysvinit )"
>
>  I like this, but the second branch (!sysv-utils) is not really needed,
>  because if we put sysvinit as the first RDEPEND of virtual/init, we
>  don't need to worry about installing it through rdepend in openrc.

To clarify why this strange looking dependency is there in
sys-apps/systemd: I felt it was fairly important to always have init,
shutdown, etc. available to avoid breaking other tools and to prevent
confusion. systemd is technically usable without them, but you would
need to explicitly set up your bootloader to add
init=/lib/systemd/systemd to the kernel command line, and you would
need to call systemctl directly instead of using the symlinks to shut
the system down.

Relying on any-of dependency ordering in a virtual package to
accomplish this is a bit optimistic. That can go wrong easily if the
user installs multiple providers.

> We can also add sys-apps/openrc as an rdepend of sys-apps/sysvinit possibly.

Please do not do this without consulting me first. This could
introduce a dependency conflict in sys-apps/systemd.