Re: [gentoo-user] Debian just voted in systemd for default init system in jessie

[Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>]

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On Sunday 23 Feb 2014 22:32:32 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 23/02/2014 20:18, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> > I don't think forking would attract much developers. Writing something
> > new trying to follow "the*nix design principles", but being modern and
> > with the same features (all of them optional, of course) of systemd
> > will have more chances; although I think it will fail because most of
> > the people that can code "better" actually like the systemd design,
> > and would prefer to contribute to it.
> > 
> > And if you found enough of this mythical good-coders, good luck
> > defining what it means "the*nix design principles".
> 
> I've been wondering about this concept of "the*nix design principles"...

Well, I'm no authority on this since I can't code, but here's a starter for 
10:

  http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s06.html

  http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~lib113/reference/unix/co-unix4.html

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy


> I've now concluded it's a myth, much like invisible pink unicorns.
> 
> Is it like the kernel? A huge monolithic chunk of code with support for
> modules?

I would think that although the kernel has grown over the years, it has not 
done so like systemd.  You can still *not* build modules you don't need in 
your kernel.


> Is it like X11? A huge monolithic chunk of code that has a bizarre build
> system for years, and took something like 5 years of hard work to get it
> modular? And is 20 years behind the times? And *still* requires devs to
> jump through hoops to get a rendered image through a compositor and back
> up the the GPU?

The X11 devs saw the error of their ways and ended up breaking up the big 
monolithic Xorg code and releasing it as a modular package since X11 7.0, if I 
recall right.


> Is it like perl? Support every possible way to do something if it
> remotely makes sense to do it, no matter how bizarre the syntax?
> Is it like python? Pick ONE way to do it and stick with it dammit!
> Is it like php? Do whatever you feel like?
> Is it like command line text processing tools that only do one narrow
> thing well? [1]
> Is it like bash? I can't find a decent description of how bash came to
> be except it's like Vogons - wasn't designed and didn't evolve, it just
> sort of ... congealed

Designing a programming language is not exactly parallel with designing an OS, 
although similarities exist (e.g. re-use code where you can and don't re-
invent the wheel).


> Not to rain on anyone's parade, but there's a prize of 40 internets up
> for the first person who can clearly and unambiguously define "Unix
> design principles" with specificity so that it is globally applicable.

The Unix design philosophy may not be globally applicable, but has served 
Linux well over the years.  Lennart has de facto introduced a different way of 
developing his Linux code, which to others and me seems more restrictive.  I 
am not saying that his coding is poor (I'm not qualified to judge), or that 
systemd is wholesale bad.  But, is this a whole new design paradigm in the 
development of Linux that we should applaud and follow, or just a mistake 
borne out of ignorance/arrogance/expedience?

Time will tell.


> [1] For lack of a better term, let's just call systemd here a "system
> controller". What is this ONE thing a system controller should do and do
> it well?

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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