Need for a fix regarding mechanism for startupitem handling

[mkae (Marko Käning)]

There are two configuration parameters handling one and the same thing:

1) startupitem_type (which could be set to "none")

2) startupitem.install (which could be set to "no")

It now depends on the individual port whether it would install a startup item or not. (See #36749)

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

They aren't handling the same thing, but I agree one of them could be removed.

startupitem_type is a setting users can set in macports.conf to indicate what type of startupitem they want a port that installs a startupitem to install. The default ever since Tiger (the oldest OS X version MacPorts now supports) is "launchd" which installs a launchd plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons. The other option is "systemstarter" which installs a script in /Library/StartupItems but there is no reason why anyone would want to do this today and we should remove this capability from MacPorts. Finally, this can be set to "none", and historically, this was what you did on secondary MacPorts installations or in other circumstances when for whatever reason you did not want startupitems installed.

When startupitem_type is launchd, in fact MacPorts doesn't install the plist directly in /Library/LaunchDaemons; rather, it installs it in ${prefix}/etc/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.${name} and then makes a symlink to it in /Library/LaunchDaemons. startupitem_install is a new setting available in recent MacPorts versions, which lets a user indicate that they do not want that symlink to be created. This is probably the setting we should keep, and remove startupitem_type.

[mkae (Marko Käning)]

Yes, I agree it's best to remove startupitem_type in that case.

This should be done by a MacPorts base maintainer, since I have no idea what else might be involved here.

[kurthindenburg (Kurt Hindenburg)]

Is it still the plan to remove startupitem_type? If so, I can work on a patch. There's a lot of code in portstartupitem.tcl that would need removed if SystemStarter is no longer needed.

[raimue (Rainer Müller)]

OS X 10.4 Tiger introduced launchd. This is also the oldest macOS release that base will still work on, therefore SystemStarter can and should be removed.

As we would only have a single type, startupitem_type can be removed as well. We can always reintroduce it later if needed.

[kurthindenburg (Kurt Hindenburg)]

What about rcng? It is the default on non-darwin systems.

[raimue (Rainer Müller)]

I don't think we need rcng any longer. The sourced ${prefix}/etc/rc.subr does not exist anyway and I am also not aware of any port providing that file. Let's get rid of rcng.

[Kurt Hindenburg <kurt.hindenburg@…>]

In ba6e65bfb4be375ed7ae65ee39338c2e97f856bf/macports-base:

startupitem_type: remove SystemStarter

Tiger introduced launchd and is the earliest OS that macports supports.
This removes the obsolete startupitem_type SystemStarter.

see #36770

[Kurt Hindenburg <kurt.hindenburg@…>]

In 5821508e9c582f83776ab67f39109e01a3a1ed5f/macports-base:

Remove configure checks for launchd

Macports supports Tiger and later which all have launchd.

see #36770

[Kurt Hindenburg <kurt.hindenburg@…>]

In 22d669ab8133585d749f45129059ed0619a7b6ec/macports-base:

Remove rcng startupitem type

This was only used on non-darwin systems and has been broken for a
while; no port uses it.

see #36770

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

In 5b83aaa439ec5ca7b5c03bac2f07f2f5076cd60e/macports-base:

Support startupitems that aren't generated by base

Whether a port has a startupitem is now indicated by startupitem.type
not being "none". Setting startupitem.create indicates that base should
generate a startupitem, and changes the default value of
startupitem.type.

If you want a traditional startupitem to be generated, nothing changes.
If you want to provide your own, set startupitem.type to the type you
are providing and install it yourself; and don't set
startupitem.create.

Fixes: #36770

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

These two options will be further differentiated as part of the fix for #44496.