[systemd-devel] [PATCH] add sprezzos as alias for debian in autoconf script

[Lennart Poettering]

On Sat, 29.12.12 15:30, nick black (nick.black at sprezzatech.com) wrote:

> I'm currently using --with-distro=debian, and it serves my purposes just
> fine. My analysis is thus:
> 
>  - a debian derivative, at the moment it derives, has behavior equivalent to
>    debian, and is thus nothing more than an alias. this holds for any
>    derivative relationship, of course. debian provides dpkg-vendor(1) to
>    explore these relationships, but it's kinda incomplete and not portable
>    in any case.

Something like this also exists portably in /etc/os-release's ID_LIKE=
switch. (We added that on request of the Debian folsk actually.)

>  - at some point, either debian or the derivative might lurch in a new
>    direction. in either case, carefully-crafted, minimal new
>    TARGET_-specific code (or however you choose to do it) can mirror the
>    divergence. all scripts continue to work.

It is strictly our goal to get rid of the differences between the
distros, rather than encouraging them.

>  - in that case, tell people like myself to piss off until we're at least
>    on distrowatch, and use --distro=debian. that's fine; it simply means
>    that, should some divergence occur, any derivative-side automation will
>    go out-of-sync until it's manually corrected.

For any new distribution I'd really recommend just following either the
schemes of another distro or just using something distro-agnostic.

Note that --with-distro= only results in relatively minimal changes in
what is built. i.e. it's all the really boring stuff, such as where the
default hostname is stored and suchlike. There's really no point in
having distros differ on that.

> > Well, is Ångström a Debian derivative? If so then we should replace it
> > by TARGET_DEBIAN, indeed.
> 
> Purrrrrrrrrrge!

Hmm, so here's one thing I a going to do right away: no longer show the
--with-distro string in "systemctl --version" so that people don't
notice anymore for what style of distro systemd is built. 

As next thing I will then try to figure out what compat kludges we
actually can drop now and whether we can replace --with-distro= with
maybe two or so --enable-debian-legacy and --enable-gentoo-legacy or so,
in order to clarify that this is about legacy compatibility and the
exception, not the rule.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.