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by _flux 2 hours ago
Yes, but one only needs to write it once, and then everyone could use it. It could probably even be packaged as an official Debian package.
2 comments

It's wild to see people having this argument in the subjunctive in 2026. I've had a convert-systemd-units tool since 2014, and provided Debian packages for the toolset that it is part of for around that long.

* https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/convert-syste...

* https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/converting-systemd-uni...

* https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/debian-binary-packages.html

> Yes, but one only needs to write it once...

...and then keep up with behavioral changes that the Systemd Project people introduce and load-bearing bugs that services end up relying on for lifecycle management.

OpenRC service files are easy to write, and their schema is far far simpler than that of Unit files. [0] It's really not worth the effort to write and maintain an converter, if for no other reason than you need to understand the semantics of both systems' service files to double-check the results of the converter.

[0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48717056>