Hello, Thank you Mattias, Emanuele and Bruce for your answers and discussion on this topic.
Meanwhile, I have also read a lot more on the internet on the heated debates regarding sysvinit vs. upstart vs. systemd (see list of links at the bottom). Some of my original concerns have not yet been addressed, as far as LFS and BLFS are concerned. And now that I understand the underlying debate a bit better, here is an update: The LFS project is educative in nature. The LFS "vi. Prerequisites" section does not stipulate that the LFS reader be aware of the whole architecture, including the init framework. Au contraire, it is the stated purpose of the project to educate the reader of such technical choices. Thus, the books and the web site shouldn't assume that the visitor knows what systemd is. I didn't. This was my very first concern: we are given the choice between "BLFS" and "BLFS systemd" without being explained what this choice entails. http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/read.html This concern has not been addressed in the discussion so far. The second major concern is the books' layout. Why two BLFS books? As Emanuele pointed out, systemd belongs more to LFS than to BLFS. I finally figured out that Sysvinit is installed in LFS: 6.57. Sysvinit-2.88dsf http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/chapter06/sysvinit.html while its replacement systemd is installed in its own version of BLFS. This is inconsistent. The choice of init framework should logically be discussed in a single place, probably a dedicated chapter in LFS, which incidentally should reduce the overhead of maintaining two whole only partially different BLFS books (a current choice that I still don't understand). Besides, from all the reading I have just made, it is now obvious to me that sysvinit is on its way out, being replaced (and often having been replaced a long time ago) by either upstart and systemd, either of which are way better for modern computing than sysvinit. The debate was not whether or not to keep sysvinit but by what to replace it with. And it seems that systemd has won all the most recent battles, if not the war. Debian is adopting systemd, and Ubuntu follows suit by abandoning its own child, upstart, in favour of systemd, to comply with upstream. LFS 7.6 having just been released, I think it would be worthwhile to consider addressing all of the above in the 7.7 version. We should: - discontinue "BLFS systemd" but keep a single, unified BLFS book (easier maintenance of the book). - dedicate a whole section within LFS to introduce and discuss the choice of init frameworks. We could: - probably offer a choice to the reader about which init framework to install. If so, subsequent sections in both LFS and BLFS would have conditional sub- sections to follow or not depending on the choice made by the user. - alternatively, consider whether to continue giving install instructions for sysvinit. That legacy framework is definitely passé and being discontinued by all distributions, so why keep it? - accordingly, consider to give the choice between upstart and systemd, or simply offer systemd only. The latter solution will make things easier for other chapters depending on the choice of init framework installed. In the meanwhile, we must: - provide with the reader some clue as to the current (BLFS 7.5 / 7.6) alternative being offered on the main BLFS page. E.g., the BLFS home page could link to the top of this discussion thread, of, if you prefer, I could write a summary of the discussion to be included in the web site, at least for the time being. yours, augustin. Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_startup_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstart Control Centre: The systemd Linux init system http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Control-Centre-The-systemd-Linux-init- system-1565543.html What are the pros/cons of Upstart and systemd? http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/5877/what-are-the-pros-cons-of- upstart-and-systemd The Biggest Myths (about systemd) http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths What sets systemd apart from other init systems? http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/114476/what-sets-systemd-apart-from- other-init-systems Debian: Debate Init System To Use https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/ https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/upstart https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/systemd Ubuntu: After Linux civil war, Ubuntu to adopt systemd http://www.zdnet.com/after-linux-civil-war-ubuntu-to-adopt-systemd-7000026373/ Gentoo: Talk:Comparison of init systems http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Talk:Comparison_of_init_systems -- http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
