Why not use S6-overlay from alpine repository?

[Bubbelb]

Since Alpine v3.13, the package s6-overlay, among others, is available in the Alpine package repository..

Shoudn't we use the packaged version, in stead of the current download we now do in the Dockerfile?

Seems to make maintenance of docker-borgmatic a bit easier.

Or is there some pressing reason just not to do this?

If there is no reason not to switch, i'm inclined to check things out and propose the needed changes.

Please, let me know.

[modem7]

I did look at this a while back, and due to Alpine having quite slow releases, we're on the back foot with upgrading S6. This also allows us to define whichever version we'd like, and include additional scripts from S6, and not just the binaries.

It was a while back that I looked at it, but I don't think much has changed since AFAIK.

[Bubbelb]

Well, that's a fair point. And to be fair, I am by no means an expert in the S6 suite. I never heard of it before I came across it in this repo.

So, I did some digging...

I queried the Alpine Package Index and the S6* version used in Alpine 3.19 (the one used in the current Dockerfile) is 3.1.6.2. See here.

The latest version of Alpine, 3.22, remains on the same version number. However the 'latest' branch uses 3.2.0.2.

The differences seem minute, this time around. See here. But that is what I checked for version 3.1 to 3.2.

So yeah, as I can see it, it's a question of (small) maintenance burden and having a specific (predictable) version, or use the packaged version and go with the Apline package maintainer's version.

It is obvious that I prefer the latter, hence my argument for it. And to put in an extra argument: Since the S6* major version number is 'frozen' per Alpine release, it sure is stable in feature sense.

As I said in the beginning, I'm no expert in the S6* packages. And thus, I do not have the complete overview of what is needed/used here. But maybe this helps in making a good argument, regardless of which option is chosen.

Greetings.