[File-rc-users] Future of update-rc.d in wheezy+1

[Roger Leigh]

Hi folks,

I'd just like to briefly discuss potential plans for update-rc.d
in wheezy+1, and how this might impact on file-rc and sysv-rc.

sysv-rc has defaulted to using LSB header dependencies and insserv
for a few years now.  The last few releases require you to enable
insserv to upgrade, and the pending upload just does this
automatically.  The result is that all wheezy users of sysv-rc
will be using dependency-based boot.

This means that the runlevels and sequence numbers passed as
arguments to update-rc.d will never be used; they will just get
silently discarded.  The main problem as I see it is that these
numbers are going to bitrot badly--they aren't being tested, while
the dependency information in the header is being used by everyone.

I'd like to suggest that we do the following in sysv-rc update-rc.d:
- wheezy: silently drop start|stop sequence numbers and runlevels
  (this is already the case when using insserv, and we can remove the
  non-insserv codepaths)
- wheezy+1: warn if these options are used
- wheezy+2: remove support for the options and error out if used
And additionally, to add lintian warnings for use of these options,
including when using dh_installinit.

The main problem that I can see is file-rc is currently still
dependent upon the sequence numbers and runlevel information.  Would
it be possible for file-rc to also add support for dependencies?
Given that the static boot ordering is quite dead at this point, it
would be very helpful to know what's possible here.  Could it use
insserv to do the dependency graph and then just consume the
makefile-style dependency list?


Regards,
Roger

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