Hello, I have a proposal for Arch Linux developers and by mailing on this list I would also appreciate feedback from non-developers that use Arch Linux. Note: I am not here to hate on the current status, nor to disapprove of current Arch choices. So, to get to the point... I would like to propose development and official support of an alternative init system and service manager. My main preference would be OpenRC + sysvinit. The combination of those two has shown to work surprisingly well even with the current Arch's binary packages which are compiled with systemd support/dependencies. There are OpenRC packages already in the AUR, as well as an unofficial repository called "openrc-eudev" that replaces udev with Gentoo's eudev. See http://systemd-free.org for more info. (Please disregard the hate on the website, I am not pro-systemd-hate) Now, I realize this is not the correct way to do this stuff, and if we want an alternative system, a lot of compiling might have to be done, Or is it possible to keep systemd support? 1. Udev... Well, there are two alternatives worth mentioning. The first is, obviously, Gentoo's eudev that works really well, and keeps udev compatibility. Another alternative worth mentioning is vdev (https://github.com/jcnelson/vdev). It is also maintained in the AUR. vdev is developed to be completely non-dependent on systemd and I think it might be a nice option to consider. Note that it is still under development. 2. Packaging... If current and furure builds are kept with systemd support, then there's only the option of including an OpenRC-compatible script in the same package, along with the systemd.service file, and then depending on what's used on the machine, install the according one (in most cases). Otherwise, new compilation will have to be done, and that brings up the issue of storage space, which, in the worst case - gets cut in half. I would need more feedback on this. 2.1. Repositories... core, extra, community and multilib would not need any -openrc offsprings. If we would build new packages, without systemd support, pacman would need code modifications to distinguish between the two - systemd and openrc. An idea is to modify the package naming scheme somehow, possibly -openrc and -systemd. 3. Support... The biggest drawback is definitely the support that goes on in ArchBBS, ArchWiki, Bugtracker and eventually #archlinux on freenode IRC. The ArchBBS and the IRC wouldn't be detriment(?) because they don't really have any *specific* support threads or sections. However, the ArchWiki would need a lot of rewriting/editing, but honestly, the community is big enough to handle it. As for the bugtracker, it might get a bit more bugs than usually :D To conclude, this is still a mere draft and a proposal. I realize that there are a lot more things to be discussed about this. So, please give me feedback on all of this and let's see what we can do about it and what it can develop into... Kind regards to the entire mailinglist, ~ parazyd
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