On 08/11/2024 05:54, Ansgar 🙀 wrote:
1. What should decide whether system-wide logging facilities exist?
Some central defaults or random packages (say foobard) shipping a
daemon?
The package in question at the start of this Recommends: rsyslog |
system-log-daemon
On a typical install, that will install a log daemon; but a user who
wants more control can arrange that it not do so.
The maintainer is saying that "in all but unusual installations" a
system-log-daemon would be found installed alongside hippotat-server.
That doesn't seem on the face of it to be an unreasonable thing for a
maintainer to say; if it were wrong in the case of this particular
package, then that would be a bug against that package.
1a. If not random packages, should policy be updated to recommend
packages not doing that?
I don't think the question arises as phrased, because this is a
Recommends: not a Depends:
Although, even then, it's not entirely clear to me that a package that
would only work if there was a system-log-daemon available shouldn't
Depends: upon it. Again, if in fact it would work just fine without,
then that would be a bug against the particular package, but that
doesn't mean that it's in principle wrong to depend on system-log-daemon.
To address Bastian's point in a follow-up to yours, policy currently
contains the system-log-daemon virtual package "a daemon that provides a
logging facility for other applications". In the past, people have
understood this as a thing that they might reasonably declare
dependencies upon, as well as a thing that they might Provides: and
Conflicts:.
I.e., the historical understanding of the system-log-daemon virtual
package was as an optional facility that might be needed on an
installation, and that might be provided by a number of different packages.
As I understand the position of the systemd maintainers, they want to
change the interpretation of the system-log-daemon package to being only
something one can Provides: and/or Conflicts:. They want to change
policy such that every Debian system can be assumed to have a logging
facility available.
I'm not entirely clear on the problem with Sean's proposal
(systemd-journald-is-syslog).
This seems like the wrong shape of solution to me; we've not
previously
assumed this,and I don't think the case for such a policy change has
yet been made.
Could I ask why the ctte considers this the wrong solution? As it was
suggested previously, I assume it was at least taken into consideration
in discussions.
To be clear, that is my position, not the committees.
Regards,
Matthew
