I have some lisp knowledge, so the scheme version doesn’t look frightening to me, but I guess for sysadmins, who should write these kind of files frequently systemd’s TOML like language is much more easier to understand.
Some differences I see: Shepherd does some firewall management with ports, and I don’t see the services it depends on.
Why this kind of files should be written in a programming language at all? I guess it’s a remnant from the old times, but I like when tools abstract away the programming parts, and users shouldn’t have to deal with that. I like the same thing in docker-compose: I can configure a program whatever language it’s written, I don’t have to deal with what’s happening under the hood.
I guess there is some usefulness with defining services as code, if you need more complex situations, but it should the more rare case nowadays.
Some differences I see: Shepherd does some firewall management with ports, and I don’t see the services it depends on.
That looks like it sets up sshd to start when someone connect to its port, not on boot. You can do the same with systemd, but you need additional .socket unit that will configure how .service unit is activated.
Why this kind of files should be written in a programming language at all? I guess it’s a remnant from the old times, but I like when tools abstract away the programming parts, and users shouldn’t have to deal with that
Systemd invents its own configuration language (it looks like ini but there no standard for that and systemd’s flavor is its own) so you still need to learn it.
Yes but as a somewhat layperson (electronics engineer and light firmware design, and some hobby sysadmin stuff), I can learn systemd’s “language” in 30 minutes and most attributes are so self evident that you can puzzle them together without learning the language at all.
That Shepherd mess I would have no idea what to change to make a small tweak without spending hours and hours learning it because it is written extremely cryptically in comparison.
It’s the difference between modifying a config with human readable names and having to go into the source code to change heavily abbreviated variables that require a lot of background knowledge to even read.
They have an example service on the website:
Let’s see how the same service looks like with systemd:
[Unit] Description=OpenSSH Daemon Wants=sshdgenkeys.service After=sshdgenkeys.service After=network.target [Service] Type=notify-reload ExecStart=/usr/bin/sshd -D KillMode=process Restart=always [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.targetI have some lisp knowledge, so the scheme version doesn’t look frightening to me, but I guess for sysadmins, who should write these kind of files frequently systemd’s TOML like language is much more easier to understand.
Some differences I see: Shepherd does some firewall management with ports, and I don’t see the services it depends on.
Why this kind of files should be written in a programming language at all? I guess it’s a remnant from the old times, but I like when tools abstract away the programming parts, and users shouldn’t have to deal with that. I like the same thing in docker-compose: I can configure a program whatever language it’s written, I don’t have to deal with what’s happening under the hood.
I guess there is some usefulness with defining services as code, if you need more complex situations, but it should the more rare case nowadays.
That looks like it sets up sshd to start when someone connect to its port, not on boot. You can do the same with systemd, but you need additional .socket unit that will configure how .service unit is activated.
Systemd invents its own configuration language (it looks like ini but there no standard for that and systemd’s flavor is its own) so you still need to learn it.
Yes but as a somewhat layperson (electronics engineer and light firmware design, and some hobby sysadmin stuff), I can learn systemd’s “language” in 30 minutes and most attributes are so self evident that you can puzzle them together without learning the language at all.
That Shepherd mess I would have no idea what to change to make a small tweak without spending hours and hours learning it because it is written extremely cryptically in comparison.
It’s the difference between modifying a config with human readable names and having to go into the source code to change heavily abbreviated variables that require a lot of background knowledge to even read.