[gentoo-dev] Re: openrc portage news item

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

William Hubbs posted on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:58:51 -0500 as excerpted:

> On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 08:41:16PM +0200, "Pawe?? Hajdan, Jr." wrote:
>> On 4/13/11 8:15 PM, William Hubbs wrote:
>> > The baselayout package provides files which all systems must have in
>> > order to function properly. You are currently using version 1.x,
>> > which has several issues. The most significant of these is that the
>> > included init system is written entirely in bash, which makes it slow
>> > and not very flexable.
>> 
>> I think it would be worth it to mention other problems too (just a list
>> of most important bugs if that makes sense).
> 
> Does anyone on the list have any particular suggestions for what should
> be mentioned?

The definition of "important" might vary per person, but, while it has 
been awhile since I ran baselayout-1, here's what I recall that I'd 
consider significant.

1) While baselayout-1 had a parallel boot option, it was quite broken and 
(partly or entirely, not sure which) non-functional.  The same thing in 
baselayout-2/openrc works WELL and I use it all the time.  (Given the 
emphasis placed on this in the media, the various boot-timing contests, 
etc, and the fact that this feature puts Gentoo in-play again in regard to 
speed-boots, it's a pretty big positive in favor of upgrading.)

2) In baselayout-1, the early-boot wasn't actually dependency based, but 
rather, was strict-serial-order based on a list of IIRC four services 
started in the exact order they were listed.  (clock or whatever the 
baselayout-1 name was, was one of them, IDR the others).  OpenRC/
baselayout-2 is fully dependency based at every stage.

I mentioned both of these points earlier in a different context.

FWIW/IMHO, I don't believe the news item needs mentioning that it was bash 
that made it slow and inflexible.  Most users don't so much care whether 
it's C or bash or java that made it so, only that it was.  I'd personally 
put more emphasis on the /how/ instead of the /why/, as I believe that's 
what most users want to know.  The above two points support that, thus, 
reworking that whole bit:

"""
You are currently using version 1.x, which was slow and inflexible.  It 
was slow in part because the parallel boot option was broken, and 
inflexible in part because dependencies didn't work until later in the 
boot process, so the first few services had to be started in order 
according to an arbitrary list.
"""

No mention of bash as a reason because that's an internal implementation 
deal I as an admin don't want or need to care about.  What difference will 
it make in the way my system boots and how will that be better, that's 
what I as an admin want to know.

(That said, the above can surely be improved as well.  The ideas conveyed 
are better I believe, more direct to what a Gentoo user/admin will likely 
want to know, but I'm my wording isn't right, yet.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman