On 1/28/2020 1:33 PM, Thomas Goirand wrote: >> It'd need to be a script that the systemd maintainers feel reasonably >> confident will always run systemd's implementation when systemd is >> running, to avoid the mixed implementations issue. > > Not at all. Systemd maintainers have no say if someone wishes to > implement things in another way, the same way there's gawk and mawk, > implementing the same thing. If we don't allow such things, then really, > Debian is doomed.
The interface in question here is "awk". So if the interface would be a hypothetical "update-sysusers", then this could be shared with alternatives. I completely understand the view of the systemd maintainers that "systemd-sysusers" as a binary should be provided by their package rather than an alternative. >> Strikes me as there is a possible solution, though: have opensysusers >> dpkg-divert it and put a shell script in its place that checks which >> init system is running, and exec's the right sysusers based on that. > > This is exactly what should be avoided. It's perfectly fine to try to > use opensysusers with systemd if one wants. In fact, that's exactly the > best way we could do to be able to test it. Also, dpkg-divert is really > ugly, and something you use as the last resort, when all other options > have been exhausted. If the problem here is that everything embeds a call to systemd-sysusers directly and you want to provide a different intermediate interface eventually then diverting it as a workaround in the meantime seems sound to me, no? So far I see you present a single option rather than trying to negotiate within the option space. Good escalations are not "Moreover, I don't see why /usr/bin/systemd-sysusers would be any different from let's say /usr/bin/awk." but trying to present the two opposing viewpoints and potential solutions to them. Kind regards Philipp Kern
