From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 22 22:07:43 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher AECDH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id B8F4AF0A for ; Wed, 22 Oct 2014 22:07:43 +0000 (UTC) Received: from know-smtprelay-omc-11.server.virginmedia.net (know-smtprelay-omc-11.server.virginmedia.net [80.0.253.75]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2F005B1E for ; Wed, 22 Oct 2014 22:07:42 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [192.168.1.100] ([86.20.122.200]) by know-smtprelay-11-imp with bizsmtp id 6N6W1p04K4KXVwe01N6WDf; Wed, 22 Oct 2014 23:06:31 +0100 X-Originating-IP: [86.20.122.200] X-Spam: 0 X-Authority: v=2.1 cv=Cq4xcxID c=1 sm=1 tr=0 a=WByauD8lJrWvBFCNrxRoEQ==:117 a=WByauD8lJrWvBFCNrxRoEQ==:17 a=9cW_t1CCXrUA:10 a=TlgFaoZnv2EA:10 a=uObrxnre4hsA:10 a=IkcTkHD0fZMA:10 a=NLZqzBF-AAAA:8 a=3lyhV3dlu1MEQZMdgTkA:9 a=QEXdDO2ut3YA:10 Message-ID: <54482A5E.2050303@NTLWorld.com> Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 23:06:22 +0100 From: Jonathan de Boyne Pollard User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 CC: "freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: nosh version 1.9 References: <54430B41.3010301@NTLWorld.com> <5443191E.5050208@mu.org> <34F30D28-DE9B-444F-885E-F438FEEA46EC@mu.org> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 22:07:43 -0000 Outback Dingo: > > IMHO I think we'd be better off with launchd... but this does show > intelligence.... > A while ago, I lived in a comfortable little world. Yes, everyone else was getting the likes of Solaris SMF, AIX SRC, systemd, upstart, and whatnot. But BSD was alright. Someone was bound to come along and package up launchd. After all, MacOS is BSD ... right? Then I did some investigation. There have been, to my knowledge, three attempts (in 2005, 2008, and 2013) to give launchd to the general BSD world that have involved more than just talk. All have foundered. The discomforting truth is that we aren't going to get launchd for doing service and system management for the very same reasons that we aren't going to get systemd for doing service and system management. systemd is full of Linuxisms. launchd is full of Machisms. It's simply not a BSD program. It's a Mach program. (The fact that the initial process program isn't portable is obvious in hindsight. I kicked myself. I've written several initial process programs before. They aren't, and cannot be, limited to non-operating-system-specific stuff.) One attempt to port launchd involved stubbing out the Machisms. There has been a recent attempt to port systemd to FreeBSD that is in the same boat: stub out or remove all of the operating system specific parts, and one can get a program that will compile (with a lot of compiler warnings); but it doesn't function. The launchd train is never coming. It's this realization, in addition to several other motivating factors, that spurred me to aim high with nosh, and actually set that task of converting those rc.d scripts. Feel free to thank the valiant and noble failures of the launchd porters for the fact that there's one alternative to BSD init that doesn't put an XML parser into the program for process #1. (-: