Bug#1084924: The system-log-daemon virtual package

On 11/10/2024 12:03, Helmut Grohne wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2024 at 10:46:47AM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
>> Hi.  Earlier this year I was asked [#1072021] to remove
>>    Recommends: ... system-log-daemon
>> from one of my packages.  There are some explanations here:
>>   [0]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/05/msg00425.html
>>        https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/05/msg00436.html
>>
>> The effect of making this change is that on non-systemd systems,
>> nothing pulls in a syslog daemon and no logging takes place.
>> This seems wrong.
> 
> I agree that the proposed solution is less than ideal.

Likewise (and I see some strength in the argument that stopping anything 
from depending on system-log-daemon is a policy change even if the 
system-log-daemon remains as only a thing that things Provide: and 
Conflicts:).

> Either the reference is wrong or the attribution should be Simon
> Richter. The proposal is to update system-log-daemon dependencies to
> "systemd-sysv | system-log-daemon" and that is something that cover the
> relevant use cases of running systemd-only, sysvinit with
> system-log-daemon and systemd with forwarding to a system-log-daemon. It
> feels a bit annoying to have to encode systemd-sysv here, but on a
> technical level, that's what we want to express here. I fear what is
> required here is design work.

That isn't obviously a terrible answer in my view; as I see it the 
objection is that doing so means that container images may end up 
pulling in an unnecessary syslog package. I don't think that's the end 
of the world (it's a couple of MB at most), but I can see that a 
solution that avoided this would have merit.

Hippotat Recommends: system-log-daemon, however, so presumably if one 
were putting it into a minimal image, one would not be pulling in 
Recommends: willy-nilly in any case.

My feeling is, I think, therefore, that packages should still be able to 
Recommend (et al) system-log-daemon (since we do have sysvinit users of 
Debian), and that Simon Richter's suggestion is a sensible way of 
achieving that absent a neater solution that helps with the 
container-building question.

Regards,

Matthew