Re: RFE: make the init manager an image feature (again)

[Ross Burton <ross.burton@intel.com>]

Hi,

Just brainstorming out loud, but here's a suggestion that might just please everyone:

A virtual provider for the init manager, which can be overridden per-image (for main / rescue images).

DISTRO_FEATURES contains the init script *style* that you want: sysvinit or systemd.  These are not mutually exclusive so specifying both will get you both directly in packages that support both.  I'm still not convinced we need to split these out into separate packages, the size impact is practically negligible and the dependencies are effectively redundant as you'll have trouble booting without an init system.  Instead the postinsts should wrap the initscript fragments in checks.

Those distro features will also be used to enable/disable features in the source, so enabling systemd may well lead to libsystemd-* libraries sneaking into your rescue image.  The systemd libraries will have to be reviewed to verify that installing one of them doesn't pull in systemd itself.

Here's the fun bit - we can't have two builds of udev in the same distro, and that's what could happen, so I think we'll need to cut down to one udev instead of two.

I'm not entirely convinced this is a good plan yet myself though…

Ross