On 18/12/24 14:16, Simon Richter wrote:
Most likely it is because BSD does not have systemd, and quite a lot of
Postfix installations, especially larger ones, run on BSD.
[...]
I don't see this happening without upstream support. However, upstream
has little incentive to do so: they currently have an orchestrator that
works, is completely controlled by them and not subject to another
project's interface changes (rare as they may be), and is free to make
the assumption that the services being started are vaguely related to
mail delivery.
If they were to ship unit files, they'd end up in the same documentation
nightmare as we would if we were to start doing so, and if they create a
generator and start using systemd as the controlling process, they would
not gain anything, because neither can they drop their own orchestrator
(so this creates additional testing surface, as their services would now
need to implement *two* service manager protocols), nor would that
directly provide any additional functionality.
This situation is similar to that of OpenSSH, although on a reduced
scale. Upstream OpenSSH does not support systemd (nor Linux...),
nevertheless Debian runs sshd through systemd via service files provided
by Debian itself. There is indeed a documentation schism, but its
effects do not seem to be tragic.
As a postfix user, I'd be happy to test and contribute to a (perhaps
cross-distro) postfix-systemd project that replaces master.cf with a set
of systemd unit files.
Regards,
--
Gioele Barabucci
