Re: Init system deba{te|cle}

[Marko Randjelovic <markoran@eunet.rs>]

On Mon, 04 Nov 2013 10:44:23 -0600
Conrad Nelson <yaro@marupa.net> wrote:

> Not everyone is a programmer, but a lot of non-programmers are still 
> admins but are not interested in working with shell scripts if they 
> don't have to. 

We already have: skeleton, /etc/default. I agree it's poor, but 
as I said, and at least for me, the right way is to extend existing software:

(1) add new features to sysvinit
(2) add new software in addition to sysvinit
(3) make init scripts more correct (abstraction)
(4) extend configurability (more options in /etc/default/*)

(3) makes (4) easily possible

And if sysvinit is in accord with UNIX philosophy,
and as they say it is, than I don't see why (1) and (2) would not be
possible, too, and with not to much effort. About what they say as
disadvantages of sysvinit (lack of features), is not really to blame
sysvinit, because it does one thing and do it right[1]. Other features
could be implemented as additional software. On the other hand, what
actually was done was writing new software that make old software
obsolete and that do *many* things, which is not in accord with UNIX
philosophy (and is in accord with authoritarian philosophy).

> Further, shell scripts can have any number of bugs in 
> them that are harder to find than unit files which rarely have more than 
> a dozen lines in them.

Every complex software has bugs, including complex init system.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Mike_Gancarz:_The_UNIX_Philosophy rule 2

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