[TUHS] Re: Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy' The Register

[Alexis <flexibeast@gmail.com>]

"Greg A. Woods" <woods@robohack.ca> writes:

> At Sun, 16 Jun 2024 15:48:15 +1000, Alexis 
> <flexibeast@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> Subject: [TUHS] Re: Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix
> philosophy' The Register
>>
>> Here's an excerpt from something i wrote
>> on the Gentoo forum back in April:
>>
>> > [[...]] the situation on
>> > Linux was a mess. Many of the (usually
>> > volunteers) who maintain packages for
>> > Linux don't want to have to learn the
>> > complexities of shell scripting and the
>> > subtle issues that can arise
>
> That pretty much says it all about the state of the GNU/linux 
> world
> right there.
>
> In the "Unix world" everyone learns shell scripting, some better 
> than
> others of course, and some hate it at the same time too, but I 
> would
> say
> from my experience it's a given.  You either learn shell 
> scripting or
> you are "just a user" (even if you also write application code).

i feel this comment is unfair.

The specific thing i wrote was:

> the _complexities_ of shell scripting and the _subtle issues_ 
> that can arise

[emphasis added]

The issue isn't about learning shell scripting _per se_. It's 
about the extent to which _volunteers_ have to go beyond the 
_basics_ of shell scripting to learn about the _complexities_ and 
_subtle issues_ involved in using it to provide _robust_ service 
management. Including learning, for example, that certain 
functionality one takes for granted in a given shell isn't 
actually POSIX, and can't be assumed to be present in the shell 
one is working with (not to mention that POSIX-compatibility might 
need to be actively enabled, as in the case of e.g. ksh, via 
POSIXLY_CORRECT).

Here's a FreeBSD thread from 2014, about how service(8) wasn't 
providing the same environment to scripts that boot did:

  https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/svn-src-head/2014-July/060519.html

i'm a BSD user as well as a Linux user - i've been maintaining 
OpenBSD servers for several years. i certainly have my own 
criticisms of Linux versus OpenBSD - for example, i'm, mm, 'not a 
fan' of the somewhat cavalier attitude towards documentation that 
can often be found in the Linux world, so i'm grateful for people 
like Alejandro Colomar and his extensive work on the Linux 
man-pages project. But i feel the above thread suggests that 
either the FreeBSD devs are clueless about shell scripting or - as 
i feel is actually the case - that service management via shell 
scripting isn't as straightforward as one might assume.


Alexis.