Anton Aylward wrote:
UNIX has a long tradition of tables-as-text-files
As long as they are human readable and easily processed by text processing utils... The new log format is binary.. that's hardly human friendly or flexible.
There have been many variations on how the 'stanzas' are delimited. XINETD and xorg.conf use curly brackets in the C tradition. SSH uses a similar label/indent form but without the brackets.
SSh is: "keyword [separator] value [value]..." But either way it's text. XML -- not so human readble.. On the other hand, PDL, is fairly readable and is used for storing all sorts of data and from what I understand is as semantically rich as XML..
I'm surprised that you assert that the interpreters are not table driven.
It's all about the interface to the humans. Humans don't generally interact with table internals. Tables don't have the same expressiveness as arbitrary shell languages.
Some interpreters that don't need huge key-word lists and the kitchen sink of built-ins
--- Builtins are the same thing as a another language's API...
Systemd is like that too; it is small and is essentially a dispatcher. Just as the shell, in V7 days, was encompassing because, due to space limitations, scripts were preferred over compiled code.
There were a LOT of scripts and the functionality of V7 UNIX was easy to learn from reading them.
And the same is true for systemd? Can you type in commands to systemd in the same language and try things?
If your argument is that systemd is taking much under its wing, then I agree and I think that is a good thing
Monocultures are easy to subvert, control and pervert. It makes someone controlling things that much easier -- NOT just on their own system but everywhere the monoculture exists. The more power you give it, the more capacity for exploits to do bad things...
The utilities are still out there; systemd is just managing them in a more regular fashion.
Resistance is futile. All services will be assimilated... Hmmm... and you wonder why I draw parallels with MS.
They are all plain text, easy to comment (unlike the Windows registry),
I run regular registry dumps on windows -- can edit and restore them. Have completely restored systems from text registry dumps... wouldn't suggest it for everyone, but it does work. Put a file system on top of it and you have /proc.
Take for example the kernel's vfs mechanism. Instead of drivers being hard coded one at a time into the kernel there is now a dispatch table that the drivers plug into. It has led to the development of many new file systems.
At the low level uniformity is good -- at the user interface level it is bad. Think machine instructions -- x86 compat = good for usability, But make everyone use Windows or Apple or linux... bad. Systemd is controlling the user interfaces to all the services.. it's not a kernel (thought I sure it is striving to become one)... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org