Re: Q: systemd-timer vs cron
On Sun, 13 Mar 2022 18:02:55 +0100, Christian Kastner <ckk@debian.org>
wrote:
>On 2022-03-13 11:06, Marc Haber wrote:
>> The anti-systemd faction in Debian is cordially invited to step in,
>> bring cron and cronie up to shape, before asking the rest of the
>> Distribution to stick with essential system software that has been
>> unmaintained for years.
>
>I don't think that's a very constructive line of argument. As a former
>maintainer, it was evident that user crontabs (crontab -e) are still
>very popular, as are some other perhaps niche features, and I've never
>had the impression that anti-systemd has anything to do with it.
That was not my intention to say. And I didn't want to put your
maintenance work in a bad light. You had quite ambitioned plans and I
am sad that it didn't work out. And, given our personpower problem
regarding core packages, your plans are unlikely to go forward any
time soon with both cron and cronie being more or less maintainerless.
Not being a systemd fanboi myself, for many things I prefer having
mechanisms outside of systemd, but if an alternative is unlikely to
move forward any time soon, I'd seriously consider migrating to
something that IS moving forward, and that is systemd timers.
>And in all fairness, I did invest a lot of time maintaining it over the
>years before I stepped down recently. I spent hundreds of hours alone on
>converting our fork of Vixie cron from source format 1.0 to 3.0 (the
>cumulative 1.0 diff spanned more than two decades of changes) so that
>our fork can more easily be compared and merged with other cron forks,
>such as cronie.
That was very good work and I am sad to see that this work is unlikely
to be done soon.
>I completed that task a while ago, but then lost all motivation to
>continue further. The cron daemons all originate from the early 90s.
>systemd timers, being newer, just seem like a much cleaner
>implementation, and thus the way forward to me. I could no longer muster
>the time or energy to work on something I wasn't happy with, so I
>stepped down.
I fully understand.
>In my opinion, the way forward for cron would be for someone to adopt
>cronie, carry over any Debian patches not already included or equivalent
>(there aren't too many, last time I checked), and to make cronie the new
>default cron daemon.
That would be very good. Sadly I am not in a position to do that
myself because I lack the C skills. i surly hope that someone steps
in.
Thank you for caring about cron and cronie!
Greetings
Marc
--
-------------------------------------- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -----
Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " |
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834
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