Subject: Re: "The BSD Way" [was Re: Support for ACLs]
To: Darren Reed <darrenr@reed.wattle.id.au>
From: Alistair Crooks <agc@pkgsrc.org>
List: tech-kern
Date: 03/12/2001 11:26:49
On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 01:38:40AM +1100, Darren Reed wrote:
> In some email I received from Lord Isildur, sie wrote:
> > 
> > > Well, the objection *I* have is that the changes - rc.d is the poster
> > > child for this - make the system a great deal less pleasant for me.
> > 
> > Ill agree. I was vehemently against the rc.d stuff. I keep a tarball of
> > olf rc scripts and the first thing i do on a newer system is trash the
> > rc.d crap and stick in real rc's again. This rc.d thing i can _only_ see 
> > as an attempt to appease the linux-familiar and slolaris-familiar folks who
> > somehow are desperately wanted to start using netbsd. This is also a 
> > great example of what i see happening to the decisions in where NetBSD is
> > going: a few folks decide 'how things will be', and then, regardless of any
> > discussion, thats how things are declared to be. 
> 
> I'll pop in once on this thread before returing it to the bit bucket.
> 
> Those people who speak *against* rc.d simply do not understand how much
> easier it makes life.  How many commands is it to restart samba ?  What
> about DNS ?  Which signals are you meant to/not meant to use ?  There
> are so many reasons *for* rc.d it's hard to imagine not using it.  The
> best example I've seen is the one introduced in HP-UX 10 which the
> Linux camps are making various efforts at copying.  Whilst I may have
> some disagreements about how ours operates, that's a minor issue.

The people who want to use the old-style monolithic rc.conf are still
free to do so. Personally, I find rc.d much better and easier to use,
so I use it. I honestly don't care about its antecedents, I do care
about its functionality.
 
> Just quickly, I agree about the decision making progress issue you have
> raised.  There are two sides to this: one is you seemingly have people
> being ignored and the other is unless someone makes a decision, there
> will be neverending discussion.  It'd be nice to see core being able to
> take a role in contencious discussions but then that'd mean core getting
> off its ass and doing something that the group as a whole could see.
> Pigs might fly too.

Please keep your prejudices off a technical mailing list.  If you want
to vent, send me mail, and we'll see if we can work through the issue.

Thanks,
Alistair