systemd: Is it wrong?

[drago01]

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Steve Clark <sclark at netwolves.com> wrote:
> On 07/10/2011 05:35 PM, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 03:56:25PM -0500, Chris Adams wrote:
>
> Once upon a time, Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org> said:
>
> The suggestion isn't that having the options is wrong
>
> Well, that's what you said before (conveniently snipped from your
> reply).  You compared CLI args/env vars to the BKL as something to be
> eliminated; specifically, you said (and I quoted):
>
> In this case there are sound
> technical arguments against configuration by command line argument or
> environment variable
>
> You have still failed to enumerate even one of the "sound technical
> arguments".
>
> "Configuration by", not overriding configuration. It's a mistake to have
>
> Says you. It has seemed to work OK for the last 25+ years.

Yet another "it has been done for $years so it must be right" kind of
argument ...

Do you configure your webbrowser by passing command line arguments
and/or editing its source code?
Do you configure your word process by passing command line arguments
and/or editing its source code?
Do you configure $app by passing command line arguments and/or editing
its source code?

No and you wouldn't want to change to such a scheme simply because it
hasn't been like that for "25+ years".
The same thing applies to system daemons only because it has been done
like this does not make it right ... and really asking the user to
edit the source code (yes shell scripts are source code not
configuration files) is just wrong.It is kind of odd seeing people
arguing in favor of that ... with the only reason "it has been like
that for $years".

Yes people got used to that simply because there where no alternative
(people adding new scripts simply followed the lead of existing ones).
But now we have a chance to clean up this mess so we should do that
and not try to stick to the past forever.