Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2022 13:41:20 -0500 (CDT)
From: Ariadne Conill <ariadne@dereferenced.org>
To: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
cc: Tomas Kolda <koldat@gmail.com>, ~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: Native Alpine GLibc support (NEW)
In-Reply-To: <20220621114559.4d38d98e@ncopa-desktop.lan>
Message-ID: <aad724e-eddb-cd18-3f6c-53475a40f2eb@dereferenced.org>
References: <CAGFcrM=KPg5AZie-ux055SVAZu08EmSJ3s-Q_Map5j5CmGaaKA@mail.gmail.com> <20220621095653.71773d59@ncopa-desktop.lan> <CAGFcrMmniJdjO54SHR+Js=5pyuB70A_M0Ge92=pFpxjbBHYC9w@mail.gmail.com> <20220621114559.4d38d98e@ncopa-desktop.lan>
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Hi,

On Tue, 21 Jun 2022, Natanael Copa wrote:

> On Tue, 21 Jun 2022 10:49:07 +0200
> Tomas Kolda <koldat@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>> I would rather spend the resources on fixing the issues with musl.
>>>
>> I completely agree and understand your view. Unfortunately I am not in
>> a position to offer or fund the resources.
>
> This is what I was afraid of.
>
>> Yes it can bring users and yes it can generate additional issues.
>
> So more work, but not not more resources.
>
>> My intention really was to have a pure Alpine built against glibc. It
>> is a C library as a MUSL. Everything else is exactly same.
>
> I actually don't believe this, even if that is how it would start.
>
> Adding glibc support will open new possibilities, like adding support
> for systemd (see
> https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/merge_requests/33329).
>
> I believe this would trigger big discussions and possible conflicts.
> After months of conflicts and 3-5 (or more) developers leaving the
> project systemd will be merged. It would be kind of stupid to not do
> so.
>
> Now we will have to maintain both openrc and systemd services. systemd
> will add its own set of new dependencies (together with many awesome
> features of course). The initramfs scripts will need work to handle
> this, the installer script will need to be adapted to this.
>
> We would now effectively be supporting two different OSes in one
> project and at some point we will realize that we simply don't have
> resources for supporting both. The most realistic outcome would be that
> we'd need to drop openrc/busybox and musl libc support. How many other
> distros that have added systemd support has *not* ended up with it as
> the only supported init?
>
> At this point there would not really be any big difference from
> CentOS/Redhat/Debian/Ubuntu/etc.
>
> So why not just use CentOS/Redhat/Debian/Ubuntu in the first place? I
> believe there is where we'd end up anyway eventually.

Most likely he is looking for a "componentized" Linux distribution. 
Alpine, for example, generally avoids pre-declared dependencies in favor 
of automatically discovered ones.  This allows the packages to be treated 
as distinct components, and is one of the key reasons why Alpine 
containers are small.

For cases like these, the most likely alternative at the moment is probably 
Microsoft's CBL-Mariner.  My team at work is building a glibc-based 
companion distribution to Alpine, but it is not in a state where I can 
recommend it yet.

Ariadne