Re: RMS: users request you perhaps program HURD: they fear the path the linux kernel is going.

[Jean Louis]

* Alfred M. Szmidt <address@hidden> [2019-11-14 06:21]:
> 
>    Le mercredi 13 novembre 2019, 19:23:43 CET Kete via Discussions about the 
>    development of the GNU system a écrit :
>    > I disagree that they betrayed RMS. I still like the Guix contributors,
>    > probably even more now. Your systemd statement is confusing because they
>    > made their own service program called shepherd.
> 
>    To be precise, GNU Shepherd is the continuation of an old init software 
>    originally called GNU DMD, written in Scheme, that was intended to provide 
>    init system to the Hurd before Guix and systemd existed (and happened to 
>    already provide some of the best features of systemd (like dependency 
>    graph, parallelism, etc.)
> 
> GNU dmd was never intended for the Hurd, it was far more general in
> spirit.  One of the goals was that each user should be able to manage
> daemons, and give back some of the closed garden that is the init
> system.

> I also don't think that shepherd is a better name, dmd far better
> describes the intent Wolfgang and I had when we wrote and designed it.
> Infact, most of the commands now make little sense...

Alright, Shepherd changed and became Guix specific software. Maybe
they will make it better. One thing about Shepherd is that it is
lacking some justification. There are already good ways to start/stop
daemons, I don't know what shepherd is bringing other than that it is
GNU project. In my opinion it has been adopted for Guix only for being
GNU and Guile based project. Probably it was not Guile before.

In case of the service manager I would rather like to see technical
advantages over some others. 

GNU project has one other program invocation and execution supervisor,
that is pies:

Date: Tue, 02 Jul 2019 17:42:29 +0300
From: Sergey Poznyakoff <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: pies-1.4 released [stable]
Organization: GNU.org.ua

Hello,

This is to announce the release of GNU pies version 1.4.

GNU pies (pronounced ``p-yes'') is a program invocation and execution
supervisor.  It starts and controls execution of external programs, making
it possible, in particular, to run in background programs that were not
designed to be run as daemons.  Pies configuration file allows administrator
to specify arbitrary actions to be executed upon program termination
(depending on its exit code or signal number it was terminated by).  It gives
administrators complete control over the execution environment of each
program.  This includes modifying shell environment, running programs with
the given user privileges, etc.  The standard error and/or standard
output of any component can be redirected either to a disk file or to syslog.

See the end of this message for a list of noteworthy changes in this version.

Here are the compressed sources:
  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/pies/pies-1.4.tar.gz   (1.6MB)
  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/pies/pies-1.4.tar.bz2  (1.2MB)

https://www.gnu.org/s/pies

GNU pies can also be used as init daemon — the first process started
during booting. The configuration can be supplied both as a
traditional /etc/inittab file or as a native GNU pies configuration
file, which gives much more flexibility. The control interface
provides extensive monitoring and management capabilities.

It has better syntax, and does not depend on Guile.

I do not have time now, but I would make GNU free system distribution
based on skarnet.org's small & secure supervision software
suite. Comes with an ultra-fast init replacement, process management
tools, an asynchronous locking library, and more.

That one has serious underlying justification and simplicity of use.

Shepherd does not. I do not know about pies.

Jean