work-needing packages, making things better

[Mason Loring Bliss]

The other day, I read the work-needing packages report, and noted:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Work-needing packages report for Jun 23, 2023

   sysvinit (#935416), requested 1400 days ago
     Description: System-V-like init utilities
     Reverse Depends: aptitude-robot backuppc bacula-director bacula-fd
       bacula-sd bootlogd buildd console-setup-freebsd console-setup-linux
       courier-authdaemon (41 more omitted)
     Installations reported by Popcon: 218391
     Bug Report URL: https://bugs.debian.org/935416
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Following the link brings one to a bug reported by Dmitry Bogatov, but he's
evidently no longer a Debian developer.

It seems reasonable that this bug should exist, but is there someone here
that can update the contact information and potentially the contents? Last
year I wrote volunteering time and effort and didn't get anything
substantive back, and in looking for ways to be useful recently I noted
this bug just a couple days ago, but it was a brief, disheartening
adventure finding out that Dmitry is no longer involved.

Do we have a task list for enhancing sysvinit support? I'd like to work
with other interested folks in making more things happen, examples
including:

1) init selection in the installer

2) more documentation for how to install with sysvinit and work around
common issues that might be encountered

3) Alternate packages for common things that shouldn't depend on
libsystemd0 (or libelogind0)

I'm also interested in hearing about and working on other folks'
priorities. It seems like a functional contact in the work-needing package
bug might help get more support. My Debian packaging chops are fairly
minimal, but I've got a couple folks willing to sponsor me and work with me
to shore up my understanding of form and procedure. In the meantime, I
maintain a couple projects making use of Debian with sysvinit:

    https://github.com/ChibaPet/install-debian-zfs-sysvinit
    https://github.com/ChibaPet/lxc-utils

(I'm in the very slow process of popping things out of my ancient
was-CVS-then-Subversion-now-git repository and putting some things up on
github.)

-- 
Mason Loring Bliss   ((  "In the drowsy dark cave of the mind dreams
mason at blisses.org     ))  build  their nest  with fragments  dropped
http://blisses.org/  ((   from day's caravan." - Rabindranath Tagore
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