I thought it would have been smooth, though it wasn’t. OpenRC shipped /sbin/rc, which conflicted with the “rc” shell (an implementation of the AT&T Plan 9 shell), and /sbin/runscript was conflicting with minicom. With the help of upstream authors, /sbin/rc was renamed /sbin/openrc, and /sbin/runscript was renamed /sbin/openrc-run.
However, the main goal is reached: after last summer Google Summer of Code project, and a bit of rework for the ruff edges, OpenRC made it to Debian.
So, if you wish to try OpenRC, which is a direct replacement for sysv-rc, just add the Debian Experimental repository to your sources.list, and do “apt-get install openrc”. The only issue will be the first reboot, though that should be fine if one manually shuts down every running daemon, and then type what the postinst suggests as command echoed on the screen. Suggestions on how to improve this is welcome. I warmly also welcome more general feedback.
I’d like to publicly thank Patrick Lauer, Benda (李明宇), WIlliam Hubbs, Alexander Vershilov (who are all OpenRC upstreams), Bill Wang who was the GSoC studdent working on OpenRC, Roger Leigh who is the current sysv-init/sysv-rc maintainer, for their help and support when porting OpenRC to Debian. Without them, it wouldn’t have been possible.