[gentoo-dev] initscripts in python

[Justin Whitney <ripple.gentoo@ripple.be>]

Hi,

I don't really like talking about these kinds of vague ideas (like I'm
doing here), because that doesn't get them written - but this one I want
feedback on first before I dive in... so...

For a lot of reasons I'd like to implement the initscrits in something
other than shell script.  Something like python, say.

Reasons for doing this would include:

*writing (advanced) shellscripts requires learning awk/sed, and various
other minor tools (mostly because their features aren't supported by the
language).  Use of a language with these features builtin lowers the
learning requirement, or at least puts it all under one roof.
*improved performance and bytecode-compilability
*Speedups due to fewer exec calls (for awk/sed/etc)

Reasons NOT to do this would include:

*breaking from standard would mean packages with provided initscripts
would require a rewrite.
*slight increase in boot requirements (interpreter and libs must exist
at least minimally on root partition)
*probably needs a bit more memory

other bits:

*compatibility could obviously be maintained, as existing shell scripts
could still be run without changes.


Note: I am by no means proposing this as a standard feature of gentoo.

That said, since gentoo already uses python for portage, selecting
python as the language to use makes sense.  Aside from the re-writes,
and some other details, I don't see much disadvantage to the above
design.

Comments appreciated.

--Justin Whitney


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