make-rc: A parallel (as in make(1)) alternative to sysv-rc

[Morel Bérenger]

Le Wed, 5 Jan 2022 03:03:53 +0100,
"Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)" <alx.manpages at gmail.com> a écrit :

> Hi all,

Hi.

> So, last friday (yes, that's New Year's Eve), I was reading
> something, and got this idea... the main valid claim for systemd is
> that it blows away competition in terms of performance?  Full
> parallelization?  Knows about dependencies?  I don't know too much of
> systems; I know some basic stuff, but I'm mostly a C programmer, so I
> don't know init(1)... okay. But since I program, I sure know the good
> ol' make(1).  It's old, and it's good at fully parallelizing
> _everything_.  Dependencies? sure; fast? sure; parallel? sure;
> simple? sure; a bit bloated? GNU make maybe, especially for init(1),
> but far from systemd(1):

I would not say make is good at doing stuff in parallel: it often
messes up the logs together, and logs are important.
It's syntax is also... well, the tool tries to do a lot, and even have
built-in rules to generate object files for all files with a name
ending in .c (in the same folder, ofc, otherwise it would be too clean).

I'm certain this can be a fun project, but honestly, there's one thing
I really like: when my logs (any kinds of logs: compiler's outputs,
daemon's logs, boot logs...) are not mixed, so that when problems arise
I can hunt and kill the bug more easily.
If I wanted to use a tool like make to handle the boot of daemons, I'd
rather use ninja, which was made for multiple CPUs, does not suppose
anything and is, overall, way dumber than make, and I like dumb
softwares: they're easy to understand, and to do have what you really
want, instead of what their authors thought you'd want.

PS: systemd's good points is likely not the speed. Dependencies?
Possibly, but I'd bet more on the on-demand thingy, something like what
tcpd did, but with non-IP stuff (AF_UNIX sockets are supporter, I've
read).
Personally, I'm pretty happy with runit though. It certainly have it's
problems, but so far, they were easier for me to solve than with any
other system I've read about.

Anyway, have fun: tinkering is what's interesting with FOSS, even if
people don't share you ideas :)