With some regret, LFS/BLFS will no longer be developing the System V versions
of the books.
There are two reasons for this decision. The first reason is workload. No one working
on LFS is paid. We rely completely on volunteers. In LFS there are 88 packages. In
BLFS there are over 1000. The volume of changes from upstream is overwhelming the
editors. In this release cycle that started on the 1st of September until now, there
have been 70 commits to LFS and 1155 commits to BLFS (and counting). When making
package updates, many packages need to be checked for both System V and systemd. When
preparing for release, all packages need to be checked for each init system.
The second reason for dropping System V is that packages like GNOME and soon KDE's
Plasma are building in requirements that require capabilities in systemd that are not
in System V. This could potentially be worked around with another init system like
OpenRC, but beyond the transition process it still does not address the ongoing
workload problem.
In the future, the LFS/BLFS 12.4 System V books will continue to be available. For
the most part newer versions of packages in those books will be able to be built with
the instructions from there, but will not be tested by the LFS editors.
The next version of LFS/BLFS will be version 13.0 and is currently has a target
release data of March 1st.
As a personal note, I do not like this decision. To me LFS is about learning how a
system works. Understanding the boot process is a big part of that. systemd is about
1678 "C" files plus many data files. System V is "22" C files plus about 50 short
bash scripts and data files. Yes, systemd provides a lot of capabilities, but we will
be losing some things I consider important.
However, the decision needs to be made.
-- Bruce Dubbs
linuxfromscratch.org
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