Resurrecting file-rc

[Andrew Kanaber]

Hi,

Sorry for leaving this so late, but I'd like to resurrect file-rc. For those
not familiar, file-rc uses the SysV init daemon but records which scripts to
start and stop for each runlevel in a single config file, /etc/runlevel.conf,
instead of the traditional forest of symlinks in /etc/rc?.d/ . It achieves
this by providing alternative implementations of update-rc.d, /etc/init.d/rc
and /etc/init.d/rcS

The version of file-rc in stretch (0.8.18) works fine installed into a buster
SysV VM. Since it only interacts with the established SysV interface rather
than the ever-changing modern desktop/systemd world I wouldn't expect it to
ever need much change. I'd be happy to help with any work that does turn out
to need doing in future, although I am not a DD or DM.

It was removed in Debian bug 904318 on basically the argument that systemd
provides all its advantages (with the added wonder that is systemd in
general), missing the point that it's useful for people who A) want to use
SysV init but B) prefer having the state of which scripts are started when in
a single convenient file rather than a slightly awkward bunch of symlinks.

As I said, the stretch version still works as far as I can test, all that
needs changing are the dependencies for initscripts and sysvinit-core, which
should depend sysv-rc | file-rc instead of just sysv-rc, as they did in
stretch.

Thanks,

Andrew