On 08/27/2016 11:48 PM, Michał Górny wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Aug 2016 23:30:09 -0700
> Daniel Campbell <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> On 08/24/2016 09:42 AM, Zac Medico wrote:
>>> On 08/24/2016 09:33 AM, Michael Orlitzky wrote:  
>>>>   * no benefit put forth so far, other than that it's the same file that
>>>>     systemd uses, which is true but not beneficial as far as I can tell  
>>>
>>> It's a de facto standard. Being different for the sake of being
>>> different is not a virtue in cases like this.
>>>   
>>
>> And doing things because "everyone else does it" is dumb, because it
>> precludes our ability to choose and makes us subject to the decisions
>> made outside of our distribution. Of course, as a distro we're subject
>> to outside decisions often, but what's the point of being a distro if
>> you're doing things the same way everyone else does?
> 
> And doing things different just because "we can" is even more dumb,
> because it precludes our ability to offer users consistent environment
> and makes us subject to the decisions made by random Gentoo developers
> long time ago. Of course, as a distro we're subject to single developer
> decisions often, but what's the point of being a distro if you are
> bound to bad decisions made in the past by a single person?
> 
> Not saying that I care but just pointing out how dumb this
> argumentation is.
> 
Well, the thing is that -- on a Gentoo system -- /etc/conf.d/ is pretty
consistent. We still ship some things in their typical location, like
fstab, locale.gen, etc, but those don't directly relate to OpenRC and
aren't (to my knowledge) part of its problem space. The files in
/etc/conf.d/ that don't relate to system settings are shortcuts to
setting daemon options instead of shoving them into the scripts.

So if we go with /etc/hostname, it's inconsistent with what we (Gentoo)
do but in line with most others. The inverse is also true, putting us in
a catch-22. The "do both" will attract ire from some of us, but the
prior suggestion to throw it into an ebuild phase will largely avoid
this bikeshedding. Whether or not the phase can do that *cleanly* and
*correctly* is another matter for a different thread, but I do think
Portage (the openrc or systemd/docker/whatever package(s)) should be
handling that on Gentoo in order to reduce clutter and confusion.

There is one technical concern, though... If the OpenRC ebuild symlinks
or otherwise owns /etc/hostname and the user switches to a systemd
profile, would Portage be smart enough to leave /etc/hostname alone and
let the packages switch ownership of the file? They create an ownership
block otherwise, as (I assume) systemd would also own the file. Other
inits may, as well, and I'm fairly sure you can run Gentoo without
OpenRC at all. Would we expect the user to create the file before
switching profiles, and not permit OpenRC to own the file?

-- off-topic below --

I think "because we can", in the right circumstances, is a great reason
to do something. That's how ideas are tested and come to fruition.
Distributions need to have some sort of vision or strongly held belief
in order to form a good following, or software that exemplifies said
vision. Collaboration is important, sure, but design-by-committee is
proven to be a terrible process that's prone to analysis paralysis,
bikeshedding, and encourages a culture of yes-men (and/or yes-women for
those who want PC speech). There is a middle ground where people work
together when it's beneficial and makes sense, and go their own way on
certain decisions. It's what created the distribution model in the first
place.

For the most part, the "we should do what everyone else is doing" train
is slowly reducing most distribution differences to a package manager
and some default backgrounds. I can't speak for you or other people but
I personally enjoy technical diversity. The distribution model allows
for many different approaches to be followed: things from Gentoo to
Slackware, Debian to Arch, Fedora, Gobolinux, CRUX, SuSE, etc. Doing
things "because we can" is a feature, imo, not a bug. A consolidated
GNU/Linux world would be terrible and far less colorful.
-- 
Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
OpenPGP Key: 0x1EA055D6 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net
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