Re: systemd controversy

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>]

On Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:58:30 -0000 (UTC), Kevin Chadwick wrote:

> On Tue, 19 Mar 2024 22:29:50 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>Scripts need an interpreter. Being Turing-complete, in general
>>information cannot be extracted from them except by running them. Unit
>> files have a fixed vocabulary of keyword entries, which can be easily
>> enumerated, looked up, whatever. That’s what’s meant by “declarative”.
> 
> Sorry but that is nonsense. The code behind those unit files is a lot of
> disparate C.

That’s purely down to how you choose to implement it--it has nothing to do 
with the format--and meaning--of those unit files themselves. Nobody can 
stop you from writing bad code to parse a good format.

> In my experience init scripts are made entirely of simple commands that
> are documented and editable, piece by piece.

sysvinit scripts are full of boilerplate sections that users regularly 
copy and paste from one to the next, without thinking too much about what 
they do.