RPM is not the only one [LWN.net]

RPM is not the only one

Posted Aug 23, 2006 8:24 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
In reply to: RPM is not the only one by joey
Parent article: Who maintains RPM?

Xgalaga doesn't matter -- if there are no maintainers, let it die. Cron, makedev, etc should be part of the "base system" of any Unix-like OS, and if there is no reliable upstream version, well, you need to maintain it yourself... If Debian's version, or Red Hat's version, earns respect in being well-maintained, others can use it and it may become the "canonical" version.

The BSDs do this right, by keeping all essential Unix programs in their base system and taking full responsibility for them. And all the BSDs are much smaller projects than Debian; none of them (except Apple) are corporate entities like Red Hat. If they can do it, Linux distros can too.

You may argue that this means a "fork", as FreeBSD's cron differs from NetBSD's and so on. But in cases where there is no upstream maintainer, this is unavoidable. Where an upstream maintainer does exist (gcc, binutils, openssh) the BSDs resynchronise with the upstream source periodically, and, of course, feed their own bugfixes upstream.

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RPM is not the only one

Posted Aug 23, 2006 9:05 UTC (Wed) by MathFox (guest, #6104) [Link]

I agree with what you say; a distributor has to ensure that essential packages are sufficiently maintained. This may mean that she has to bite the bullet and write her own security patches.
There are some problems with distributor maintained packages. There's the "duplication of effort" issue where each distributor writes her own patches. The "selection of the fittest patch" has halted. The base versions are different, patches can not be easily ported, patches are not communicated and the "Beneficial Dictator" has left his post. The program as such will wither without central maintainer, but it is certainly thinkable that one of the distributor's forks will become the leading variant.

Should we cry about this situation? No, it's evolution in action and as long as the sources are available there is room for someone to pick up. We should get worried when community distributions like Debian and Gentoo start withering.

RPM is not the only one

Posted Aug 23, 2006 9:40 UTC (Wed) by Frej (guest, #4165) [Link] (8 responses)

Offtopic....
Well cron sucks, it does not expect your computer to be turned off.
It did make sense then, now it doens't.
Apple fixed the mess with launchd, and now the source is there with a apache 2.0 license.

RPM is not the only one

Posted Aug 23, 2006 9:59 UTC (Wed) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

And so the world created anacron, and all was well again :)

RPM is not the only one

Posted Aug 24, 2006 19:15 UTC (Thu) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link]

Unless, of course, you want support for individual crontabs.

RPM is not the only one

Posted Aug 23, 2006 10:44 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (4 responses)

I like fcron.

I've heard others praise dcron, too.

RPM is not the only one

Posted Aug 24, 2006 19:22 UTC (Thu) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link] (3 responses)

Unfortunately, neither is a drop-in replacement for Vixie cron. There's just too much history behind vixie cron to replace it with anything that doesn't support all the weird variations of crontab syntax. (Obviously, I'm talking about the general case, done on a distribution level. Individual sysadmins can do what they want, and that's fine.)

What should really happen is to develop a cron-like system with equivalent capabilities but a sane syntax, the ability to control things like "what happens when a jobbed is skipped" or "what if the previous invocation is still running", etc. etc. etc. Instead of reading crontabs, write a converter . It can fail on the corner cases so long as it tells you it's done so.

RPM is not the only one

Posted Aug 25, 2006 15:57 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

Many of those weird variations are hardly ever used. @reboot (I think it is) was broken in Debian cron for *years* before anyone reported it...

RPM is not the only one

Posted Aug 31, 2006 19:50 UTC (Thu) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link]

But the screaming that occurred when somebody noticed! It was suddenly ABSOLUTELY VITAL and we COULD NOT LIVE WITHOUT IT!!!

But I'm not bitter.

Steve, former Debian cron maintainer.

RPM is not the only one

Posted Aug 30, 2016 17:16 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> What should really happen is to develop a cron-like system with equivalent capabilities but a sane syntax, the ability to control things like "what happens when a jobbed is skipped" or "what if the previous invocation is still running", etc. etc. etc. Instead of reading crontabs, write a converter . It can fail on the corner cases so long as it tells you it's done so.

Is that called systemd?

(lighting blue touch paper and retiring at full speed to a safe distance ... :-)

Cheers,
Wol

Upstart instead of launchd

Posted Sep 4, 2006 17:28 UTC (Mon) by ttfkam (guest, #29791) [Link]

While in general I very much like the direction Apple has taken with its operating system, and while I think that launchd is a tremendous improvement over initd, I think Upstart is a better solution to the problem -- especially for Linux systems.

Bear in mind that I own or have owned a G3 iBook, a G4 Powerbook, and an Intel-based MacBook Pro, so I'm by no means biased against Apple products.

However, this description page for Upstart accurately reflects why I think it's better than launchd (or initd-ng for that matter).

Event-driven instead of polling loops, dynamically discoverable dependencies instead of explicitly specified dependencies, compatible and resiliant with a wider variety of hardware and software configurations, and more.

I realize that launchd is getting all the press, but that doesn't automatically make it the best choice. For OS X, where the hardware and software are almost completely controlled by a single source, launchd makes sense -- and once again, is a tremendous improvement over initd. For Linux, I think Upstart best fits the bill.

RPM is not the only one

Posted Aug 25, 2006 19:22 UTC (Fri) by kreutzm (guest, #4700) [Link]

Well, I don't know about NetBSD and FreeBSD, but OpenBSD is *proud* not to feed their bugfixes upstream, instead claiming: "We fixed this a long time ago" when someone else fixes it upstream.