You Don't Love Systemd Timers Enough(blog.tjll.net)
15 pointsby yacin3 hours ago4 comments
  • hombre_fatal10 minutes ago
    NixOS comes with systemd, so I've been using it as a first-class part of managing stuff. It's great, especially coming from macOS' launchd.

    Which makes it nice to distribute a tool for NixOS so that it can lean into systemd instead of as some bolted-on afterthought.

    Makes me wonder what you'd do if you were distributing a lifecycle-heavy tool for Linux users in general since systemd isn't ubiquitous.

  • throwa35626211 minutes ago
    GNU/Linux --> Linux/systemd
  • jjgreen3 hours ago
    I've been almost convinced by systemd (and have switched to using it), but God the syntax of those service files is so ugly ...
    • zamadatix8 minutes ago
      Never thought I'd see hackers saying INI format looked ugly of all things. It's basic, sure, but that's a good thing for something meant to be easily editable by hand from any editor. Otherwise, it's just key value pairs in named sections, how ugly can it be about that?
      • hombre_fatal3 minutes ago
        It's amazing how anything nice exists in the more flat collaborative nature of open source ecosystems when people are so loud with rather inconsequential aesthetic preferences.

        Though I think here they didn't realize it's an inline shell script, not systemd config syntax.

    • whateveracct11 minutes ago
      This is why I like NixOS. Defining systemd services in it is very neat.
    • WesolyKubeczek15 minutes ago
      Could have been worse.

      Could have been YAML.

      Could have been XML.

      • silvestrov14 minutes ago
        XML would have the advantage of having a grammar so we could validate the config files.

        It would also make it much simpler to make good GUI editors for the files instead of the Notepad approach most unix config files take.

        • WesolyKubeczek4 minutes ago
          Since systemd is successfully parsing its INI files, and barks at you when you put weird shit into them, a grammar for them does exist as well.

          XML is that wonderful format that gave us vulnerabilities like death by million laughs, up to a certain moment, you could MitM DTDs, and a whole slew of everything-XML stuff back when XML was like AI is today, none of which I miss today.

          Oh, and remember times when programmers would argue whether argument order in XML files should be significant or not?

          But XML books with their idealized XML future description did give me the same warm fuzzies as some intricate clockwork mechanism to a Victorian geek.

        • Juliate12 minutes ago
          There are good GUI editors for XML?
      • jjgreen9 minutes ago
        To be honest, I think either of those would have been better ...
  • iso163115 minutes ago
    > humble systemd