On Mon, 15 Jun 2015 08:46:13 +0100
Arnt Gulbrandsen <arnt@???> wrote:


> I really appreciate upstart's way of declaring "start x after y". (I
> believe systemd does the same, which I would like if it weren't one
> of 500 features.)

I've been confused about this for a long time.

I know that every service has a "provides", that basically gives the
service a uniformly agreed upon name. And it has zero to many
"requires", which I believe means that the current service (call it A),
requires another service (call it B), so it won't start A unless B is
started. But then what does "after" mean? Does that mean *immediately*
after, or does that mean *sometime* after, and if the latter, how is
that different than "requires"?

The reason I ask these questions is that once we have a uniform grammar
for this stuff, it wouldn't be at all hard for me to write a
*standalone* program to convert it into each of:

* An ordered startup sequence
* A list of "isready" skeleton scripts that the admin fills in
* A set of run scripts that call the proper "isready"
* A properly ordered Epoch config file

Let me again emphasize, this would be a *standalone* program: People
could use it or not as they wish, and it wouldn't change the behavior
or add complexity to any init one bit.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt
June 2015 featured book: The Key to Everyday Excellence
http://www.troubleshooters.com/key