systemd: Is it wrong?

[Matthew Garrett]

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 11:49:19AM -0500, Chris Adams wrote:

> Command line arguments and/or environment variables allow script-based
> startup to adapt to current conditions without having to edit a
> configuration file.  Now maybe you could argue that every program should
> figure out relevant things for itself, but here in the real world, that
> will never be the case.

The suggestion isn't that having the options is wrong, it's that having 
them as the primary means of configuration is poor design. If your 
entire configuration takes the form of a shell script that constructs a 
set of command line options then you've increased fragility for no 
benefit. Having a proper configuration file and allowing admins to 
override specific aspects of that from the command line isn't a problem.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org