Debian Policy Updated Following Recent Systemd "Init System Diversity" Vote

Following last month's Debian init system diversity vote where the Debian developers decided on a general resolution of focusing on systemd but support exploring alternatives, the official Debian Policy has been updated to reflect that.

Debian Policy 4.5 is the new version that incorporates guidance following that general resolution.

The Debian Policy manual now states that packages with system services should include systemd service units, init scripts are encouraged if there is no systemd unit but optional otherwise, init scripts are encouraged to support the "status" argument, and use of update-rc.d is required if the package includes an init script.

The Debian Policy also saw an update that for packages creating new usernames for use by packages that the hardcoded or auto-generated usernames should start with an underscore.

More details on the updated Debian Policy manual via debian-devel-announce.