Subject: Re: [alpine-devel] Alpine features and the future

From: Shiz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2017 04:43:35 +0100

>> Definitely agree with this. I am also of the opinion that `useradd` and
>> friends seem more commonly used, and it’s a shame to have to recommend
>> using the shadow package for everyone that wants to either use it
>> themselves or have tooling using it.
> 
> Sweet. I didn't realize it was already packaged. I think adduser et al
> should be removed from the busybox distribution and shadow added to the
> default installation.

I have to highly disagree there, as the shadow package pulls in PAM. ;-)
I’m very much for a Busybox-based implementation of those utils, though.

- Shiz

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From: Drew DeVault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2017 17:03:28 -0500

I spent some time reading about and playing with s6. Overall, I like it,
but it's not perfect. My main complaints are:

- execline is stupid
- s6-rc is not very good
- anopa is not very good
- s6 is too complicated in places, things like "actually down" with
  daemon-level support are inelegant and bad

With all of that in mind, I still like it and I'd like to plan build a
simple service manager around s6 and see how it goes.

My plan is to work on another Alpine ISO remix based on some of my ideas
and see how well-received it is. It'll look like this:

- s6 plus a new service manager
- slimmer busybox (stripped down to just POSIX tools)
- ubase
- shadow (without PAM)
- slim static vim build
- dash

I'll update the ML as I make progress.

--
Drew DeVault

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From: "Laurent Bercot" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2017 23:32:32 +0000

>- execline is stupid

  You don't have to use it if you don't like it. It's used internally
by s6, but it can remain out of your sight at all times.

>  daemon-level support are inelegant and bad

  If you have constructive criticism, we'd welcome your input on the
supervision at list.skarnet.org mailing-list, or the #s6 channel on
Freenode (where anopa's author also lurks).
  I'm especially interested in what you find "not very good" with
s6-rc, and how you think it could improve. Aside from a friendlier UI,
which is something that a lot of people, including Alpine core devs,
have requested, and that is on the roadmap.

--
  Laurent

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From: Drew DeVault <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2017 09:36:34 -0500

> by s6, but it can remain out of your sight at all times.

That's not how it works. Having it on my system at all bothers me and it
speaks poorly of the design of s6 that it's required. I can choose not
to use it but it still factors into my evalulation of s6.

> Freenode (where anopa's author also lurks).

Great, I will send some feedback. I joined #s6 yesterday as well. Do
note, though, that I didn't say "bad" - I said "not very good". "Good"
is not a term I have ever applied to an init, so don't think too much of
it.

> have requested, and that is on the roadmap.

Part of the reason I did not elaborate is that my concerns are pretty
deep and I felt they'd be unlikely to be addressed without causing
issues with backwards compatability. That being said, I simply find
s6-rc too complicated. The database abstraction is not necessary and the
handling of one-shots is not great (but this is more of a problem with
s6 than s6-rc). There are a lot of places like this in s6{,-rc} where
lots of complexity is piled on to solve problems of dubious legitimacy.

I would also comment on the documentation. The website buries the lede
by putting several pages worth of rationale, comparisons to other inits,
and design docs upfront. Those should probably come at the end, after a
brief summary that gets you to grok the init's ideas and a command
reference. Also, there are no man pages, which is a problem that bugs me
for Alpine's apk as well.

Like I said in my first email, overall I do like s6 and I intend to
start working on a system based on it. Don't interpret my
acknowledgement of the drawbacks as a disdain for the software as a
whole.

--
Drew DeVault

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From: "A. Wilcox" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2017 15:40:33 -0600

On 06/12/17 08:36, Drew DeVault wrote:
> Also, there are no man pages, which is a problem that bugs me for
> Alpine's apk as well.

https://code.foxkit.us/adelie/abuild/blob/master/newapkbuild.1

getting closer every day...

- -- 
A. Wilcox (awilfox)
Project Lead, Adélie Linux
http://adelielinux.org

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