Epoch Init System Howto

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 03:34:16PM -0500, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Dec 2014 15:20:42 -0500
> Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > Here's a new Epoch Init System howto, with which any reasonably
> > knowledgeable Linux user can replace his or her current init system
> > with Epoch:
>
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/init/manjaro_experiments.htm#pure_epoch_init_system

A few points to consider:

* It doesn't start tasks in parallel. Sure it's lean. But does it boot a
  normal system fast enough?

* It doesn't have proper service dependencies. You have to manage all of
  them on your own.

* Systemd uses dbus to avoid creating its own IPC. Epoch chose to create
  its wn IPC.

* For Debian an init system considered must be able to replace legacy
  init files. Or rather: allow partial conversion: you can't afford
  rewriting all service descriptions yourself.

* On a system with package management, each package should provide its
  own service definition. Ideally the init system could parse them from
  a directory. If not, you probably need a program to pre-process them
  to a single configuration file (but then this is a generated
  configuration file - see grub2's configuration).

* The word "Object" seems odd. It seems like it could have been chopped
  off configuration directives with better planning (consider also
  ssh_config).

* ">!>" starts a multi-line comment and "<!<" ends them. Intuitively I
  would think it's the other way around. Also: hopefully bidi won't kick
  in to confuse the two.

* I also confuse it with <<< and >>>-s left from unsuccessful merges. I
  intuitively consider them error characters.


In short: a toy init system. At least for now. It's good enough for your
own home system if you spend the time configuring it, or for a custom
embedded system. It's not going to replace other systems soon.

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen         | tzafrir at jabber.org | VIM is
http://tzafrir.org.il |                    | a Mutt's
tzafrir at cohens.org.il |                    |  best
tzafrir at debian.org    |                    | friend