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Figuring what is "the one thing" is the art. It's like factoring code in separate functions that work well together and with others. There are no strict rules,

Figuring what is "the one thing" is the art. It's like factoring code in separate functions that work well together and with others. There are no strict rules, criteria or methods to attain it. Small programs communicating over pipes via plain text was/is the implementation. The philosophy is more general [1]. This one is more or less how I think of it: "Even though the UNIX system introduces a number of innovative programs and techniques, no single program or idea makes it work well. Instead, what makes it effective is the approach to programming, a philosophy of using the computer. Although that philosophy can't be written down in a single sentence, at its heart is the idea that the power of a system comes more from the relationships among programs than from the programs themselves. Many UNIX programs do quite trivial things in isolation, but, combined with other programs, become general and useful tools." "Medium sized" (systemd alone is around a million lines) C-programs are extremely difficult to debug or modify if you're not intimately familiar with the codebase. The code in them can't typically be used for any other purposes. Sysvinit as a program is very small, but the point is the protocol that allows multiple different kinds of programs to co-operate. Being able to glue things together with shell and Perl is a feature, not a bug. Journalctl is a good example of violating the UNIX philosophy. It contains its own binary format, its own grep, its own head and tail, etc. With /var/log files you don't have separate cat, grep or tail to examine files and directory listings. That is the UNIX point. And this is what I mean by general purpose. sysvinit had/has plenty of problems and systemd typically works better at least nowadays. I'm not singing any praises of sysvinit. But e.g. OpenRC manages initing without a million lines of code and taking control of more or less the whole OS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy

pkkm 3y ago
This is just motte-and-bailey. You're shifting the definition of the "unix philosophy" between the general idea of interoperability, and the UNIX design of small programs that communicate via text and are glued together with the shell and pipes. The argument doesn't work if you actually use a consistent definition: the former is an obviously good thing but also an area where systemd scores well, and the latter isn't necessarily a good idea when you're doing something other than ad-hoc text manipulation. I honestly don't understand why people want to do all these rhetorical backflips in order to maintain some kind of bizarre religious reverence for the "unix philosophy". UNIX's design was quite mediocre, it only looks brilliant when compared to the DOS lineage. How about you make an actual technical criticism of systemd instead of hiding behind vague generalities? In particular, why is it bad that all the functionality needed to manage and monitor daemons is in one program? How would you split it into several programs in a way that maintains systemd's robustness for administrators and convenience for developers? What would be the practical benefits of this split to the users and developers (no "philosophies" please)? Can you justify that this proposed split would reduce systemic complexity (the complexity of the whole system) instead of actually increasing it by just shifting responsibilities onto daemon developers?

pkkm 3y ago

This is just motte-and-bailey. You're shifting the definition of the "unix philosophy" between the general idea of interoperability, and the UNIX design of small programs that communicate via text and are glued together with the shell and pipes. The argument doesn't work if you actually use a consistent definition: the former is an obviously good thing but also an area where systemd scores well, and the latter isn't necessarily a good idea when you're doing something other than ad-hoc text manipulation. I honestly don't understand why people want to do all these rhetorical backflips in order to maintain some kind of bizarre religious reverence for the "unix philosophy". UNIX's design was quite mediocre, it only looks brilliant when compared to the DOS lineage. How about you make an actual technical criticism of systemd instead of hiding behind vague generalities? In particular, why is it bad that all the functionality needed to manage and monitor daemons is in one program? How would you split it into several programs in a way that maintains systemd's robustness for administrators and convenience for developers? What would be the practical benefits of this split to the users and developers (no "philosophies" please)? Can you justify that this proposed split would reduce systemic complexity (the complexity of the whole system) instead of actually increasing it by just shifting responsibilities onto daemon developers?