Lou Glassy <glassy@caesar.cs.montana.edu> writes:

> [4] Random idea:  How about if proponents of SysV-ish startup script
>     structures just build this as a package, put it in the package
>     tree?  [...]

If we start publishing alternative startup methods, then we:

* make it nearly impossible to write a single book/manual/document
  about system administration under NetBSD;

* create the same divergence *within our own system* that we complain
  about in Linux, making us at best hypocrites;

* waste considerable effort making things work correctly under the
  multiple systems.

In short, it's an excessively poor idea.

>     But, like I said, start+stop is nice.  How about making a script,
>     or program, or package, that has some wondrous kickstarter in it, 
>     that would let me just start and stop things...?  This would exist
>     completely independent of the existing rc+conf arrangement; I'm 
>     not wedded to any particular name for this thingie; say ya call
>     it 'service' ... I'm thinking of something like
> 
>         service hup inetd 
> 
>     to send a sighup to inetd, or 
> 
>         service stop mountd ; service start mountd

That, of course, doesn't deal at all with programs that have special
requirements beyond the trivial `foo_flags' (e.g. the NTP startup
stuff).