FS#31950 - [initscripts] rc.conf.pacnew and man rc.conf not consistent

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Lone_Wolf (Lone_Wolf) - Sunday, 14 October 2012, 12:43 GMT
Last edited by Tom Gundersen (tomegun) - Tuesday, 23 October 2012, 20:22 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Tom Gundersen (tomegun)
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Initscripts version 2012.10.1-1

The latest rc.conf supplied with initscripts leaves out a lot of things that are mentioned in man rc.conf .

for example broadcast and localization options are no longer mentioned in rc.conf .

I feel this has a big chance of confusing arch users.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Tom Gundersen (tomegun)
Tuesday, 23 October 2012, 20:22 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Comment by Dave Reisner (falconindy) - Sunday, 14 October 2012, 12:55 GMT
Why is this confusing? We point people to the manpages such as vconsole.conf or locale.conf and more generally, archlinux(7) for configuration these days. rc.conf still allows these variables, but in favor of actively promoting the better alternatives, we simply leave them out of the shipped config to discourage their use.
Comment by Lone_Wolf (Lone_Wolf) - Sunday, 14 October 2012, 13:25 GMT
When you have 2 sets of information about 1 thing that are not consistent, it is unclear which is correct .


top of man rc.conf :

RC.CONF(5) RC.CONF(5)

NAME
rc.conf - Arch Linux main configuration file


top of latest rc.conf
#
# /etc/rc.conf - configuration file for initscripts
#


Since i follow archlinux forums, news, arch-dev-public and aur-general i am aware the content of rc.conf is probably the correct one.
On the other hand the man pages are very often used in forum replies to answer questions of people, and i case there's doubt the man page is often referred to as having authority.



Sidenote :
"promoting the better alternatives" is in my opinion the wrong way to phrase that.
Arch devs have chosen to switch to systemd and it's their preferred option.
IN MY OPINION whether this is the better solution is questionable, but arch devs have made their choice clearly.

As long as non-systemd options are available, please use "preferred alternatives" instead of better .
Comment by Karol Błażewicz (karol) - Sunday, 14 October 2012, 13:30 GMT
As Dave said, it's about promoting the new way: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Rc.conf#New_configuration_file
Comment by Tom Gundersen (tomegun) - Sunday, 14 October 2012, 13:43 GMT
@Lone_Wolf: Thanks for pointing that out, fixed it in git. If you notice any other inconsistencies let me know.

As to your sidenote, the change to the 'better' config files this decision was made independently of systemd and (at least in my humble opinion) they have plenty of benefits even if we were not moving to systemd, so I think referring to them as 'better' is correct.

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