I still don't see how this is even a question. Of course it's more opaque; declarative systems are by nature (that's generally a selling point). The fact that

I still don't see how this is even a question. Of course it's more opaque; declarative systems are by nature (that's generally a selling point). The fact that most distros seem to package a brittle spaghetti mess of unit files symlinked into about 7 different places isn't particularly systemd's fault, of course, but even when they're done more sanely just by nature declarative is always more opaque than imperative.