Getting rid of systemd-sysv-convert?

[Lennart Poettering]

Heya!

When systemd was first adopted by Fedora a requirement mandated by FESCO
(or was it FPC?) was that the script "systemd-sysv-convert" (which I
wrote) should be added which is supposed to save the old runlevel
configuration of sysv scripts before we replace them with systemd units.

Now we are starting work on F20, I do wonder if we can get rid of this
thing? The script is currently part of the systemd source package (but
installed in its own systemd-sysv package), and the packaging guidelines
suggest making use of this script in all RPMs that are converted, also
adding a requires(post) dependency on systemd-sysv to those:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:ScriptletSnippets#Packages_migrating_to_a_systemd_unit_file_from_a_SysV_initscript

I'd really like to get rid of this thing (I thought it was a bad idea
from day 1 when we added it). I have the strong suspicion that nobody
ever made use of this functionality (how I know that? since runlevels
don't map that easily to systemd targets the job it does is not very
good but we nonetheless never got a single bug report about it...). I
figure next to zero of our users even knew about its existence...

What I really hate about the script is that it indirectly adds a Python
dependency to all packages making use of it. This really sucks for
minimal container setups where you really don't want Python to be pulled
in just for this reason. This then results in bugs like this one:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=976346

Anyway, I think it's a bad idea to have this, it has more drawbacks then
benefits, it is pretty much unused, and the majority of packages are
converted since a while anyway.

So, anyone still insists on keeping this around? If not I will file a
bug against FPC to drop any mention of the tool and remove it from the
systemd RPMs, and everything will get smaller and simpler and unicorns
and butterflies will reign!

(If don't get many replies to this mail, then I'd be a really happy man,
since for me that'd kinda be proof that really nobody cares about this
tool...)

Thanks,

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.