Replacing init with Upstart (Linux.com) [LWN.net]

Replacing init with Upstart (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 5, 2006 13:03 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861)
In reply to: Replacing init with Upstart (Linux.com) by pphaneuf
Parent article: Replacing init with Upstart (Linux.com)

I really can't understand what benefit we gain by adopting launchd. What packages out there for Linux use launchd syntax or require launchd? None, as far as I'm aware. So, what exactly are we "breaking away" _from_? Not much, as far as I can tell. What "fracturing" are we referring to?

Obviously, launchd already exists to some extent (but presumably some work still needs to be done to get it running well on Linux) and it does have a development team (and money) behind it. On the other hand, Apple has had a spotty relationship with F/OSS in the past.

But on the gripping hand, if launchd doesn't do everything we want (doesn't handle pluggable devices as well) I fail to see any advantage in adopting it: that would involve making massive changes to the system init process to get to a partial solution. If you're going to make those kinds of massive changes you might as well change to something that solves the WHOLE problem (or at least has the ability to do so).

And, while we might be concerned about "NIH" propagation, the fact is that Upstart is already done and available and will ship in a major distribution by the end of October... so I really can't see _any_ upside in going back to choose launchd over Upstart.

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Replacing init with Upstart (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 5, 2006 15:27 UTC (Thu) by pphaneuf (subscriber, #23480) [Link]

We'll be breaking away from classic "init". Apple already did, a rather gutsy move, but I guess they can manage to pull these kinds of things off. But you can't pull them off too often, otherwise you end up with Unix in the 80's and 90's, things all over the place. Linux brought back things together, I'm not too keen on going back to the way things were...

launchd not only exists, but has been actually deployed for about a year and a half. When the commit to Upstart was done, it had been in use on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of machines for about a year. And it has a non-crazy license, which seems to be more and more common with Apple (thankfully!). When it comes to pluggable devices, I'd say that if we supported pluggable devices as well as Mac OS X, we'd probably would be doing okay. It's already almost done now, and I've mentioned these things a few months ago, when it was barely started. I worried back then, and I still do now.