Bug#934463: initscripts: consider taking over hwclock policy machinery

[Mark Hindley]

Andreas and Chris,

Thanks for your input.

On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 12:55:41PM +0200, Andreas Henriksson wrote:
> HEADS UP: One thought here is that the init script will still need the
> actual hwclock binary. While util-linux-extra currently is
> pseudo-essential I think zeha plans to make it a regular package at some
> point in the future which probably mean you want initscripts to depend
> on it (or make the scripts handle that hwclock binary is not available,
> but that sounds less compelling to me). You might want to add the
> dependency now so that it's not forgotten once util-linux-extra is no
> longer pseudo-essential.

Dependency added.

> (I'd be happy if I could see the actual diff, but could not spot a
> relevant branch on salsa/debian/sysvinit.)

I have just pushed wip/hwclock_takeover. The diff is also attached.

(I am aware that the initscripts packaging doesn't make use of many recent
debhelper conveniences. However, I am reluctant to make changes to that at the
same time as handling this sort of transition).

> Feel free to push a branch to salsa.debian.org/debian/util-linux with
> proposed changes if you do prepare them.

I have pushed branch leepen/hwclock_initscripts_migration for review and comment.

> > If util-linux-extra were to use it, my understanding is that rm_conffile only
> > removes *unmodified* conffiles so user modifications should be preserved.

Testing this has been contrary to my expectation so far: both rm_conffile and
remove-on-upgrade only preserve user modifications to conffiles only to the
extent that they are renamed with either .dpkg-bak or .dpkg-old
appended. However, that doesn't facilitate those modifications being preserved
in the new initscript-owned conffile. Therefore, I think any active removal of
these conffiles as obsolete in util-linux-extra should wait until Forky+1, by
which time we can be sure that initscripts will have inherited the
conffiles. Are you OK with that? Or do either of you have a better solution?

> PS. I'd be happy to discuss potential improvements that can be done, but
> think the first step should only be to get the files moved over. One
> step at a time. Just don't want to leave you with the impression that
> I/we are just dumping all the burden on you for old sins. For example
> the hwclock(5) manpage probably contains questionable information.

Thanks. As you say, for the future...

Best wishes

Mark
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