[Info-vax] openvms and xterm

[Scott Dorsey]

Dan Cross <cross at spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>
>Sendmail.cf was hardly typical of most Unix configuration files,
>but surely you already know that.  Indeed, I think one could
>make a strong argument that sendmail's design, not to mention
>its configuration, wasn't very Unix-y at all.  At this point, I
>imagine that Eric would agree.

This is true although the extensive use of regexps and rewrite rules is
very Unixlike.  

Sendmail was a thing that started out clean and small and accreted more and
more crap as time went by, until it got to the point where it just was not
really much good anymore.  And then it got replaced (for the most part) by
more modular and maintainable systems.

>But a fair counter argument to the "but it's not Unix!" cries is
>that Unix lacked a robust configuration language that was
>ubiquitous across systems and packages.  That was a bit of a
>shame, but perhaps inevitable: some programs had very domain
>specific requirements for configuration that would be difficult
>to express in a generic configuration language (lookin' at you,
>sendmail).  Surely any given universal language would either be
>insufficient to express the full generality required for all
>use cases, or it would be too baroque for simple, common cases.

This is true, although with JSON things are changing a bit.

>Anyway.  I can get behind the idea that modern service
>management is essential for server operation.  But it doesn't
>follow that the expression of that concept in systemd is a great
>example of how to do it.

IF you believe this, and I am not sure that I do, then it seems to me
that the Solaris approach is far, far better than the systemd approach.
Certainly a good argument can be made for service management and there are
certainly some systems where it is a good idea, but that does not mean
that systemd is a good idea.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."