Re: Systemd support (was:Re: [GENERAL] Please say it isn't so)

On 12/07/17 05:00, Steve Litt wrote:

Hi all,

Please tell me this is a mistake:

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Systemd

Why a database system should care about how processes get started is
beyond me. Systemd is an entangled mess that every year subsumes more
and more of the operating system, in a very non-cooperative way.

There are almost ten init systems. In every one of those init systems,
one can run a process supervisor, such as runit or s6 or
daemontools-encore, completely capable of starting the postgres server.

Every year, systemd further hinders interoperability, further erodes
interchangeability of parts, and continues to address problems with
WONTFIX. In the long run, you do your users no favor by including
init-system specific code in Postgres or its makefiles. If systemd
can't correctly start Postgres, I guarantee you that s6 or runit,
running on top of systemd, can.

Postgres doesn't care which language makes a query to it. Why
should Postgres care which init system started it? I hope you can free
Postgres of init-specific code, and if for some reason you can't do
that, at least don't recommend init-specific code.

OTOH since systemd is what's being supported by a significant number of distributions it makes sense to at least try to work robustly with it.

While my preference would have been to have made such a change at a major version transition, the reality is that database systems are competitive, and not keeping up with the underlying platform would have been very much to PostgreSQL's disadvantage,

OP: Please note that you do yourself no favours at all by posting a subject line which could very easily be misinterpreted as spam.

--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]


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