Ubuntu’s “Upstart” init system used an event-based design, which was criticized by the creator of systemd, thus:
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[Upstart]'s main feature is its event-based approach: starting and stopping of processes is bound to "events" happening in the system, where an "event" can be a lot of different things, such as: a network interfaces becomes available or some other software has been started.
Upstart does service serialization via these events: if the syslog-started event is triggered this is used as an indication to start D-Bus since it can now make use of Syslog. And then, when dbus-started is triggered, NetworkManager is started, since it may now use D-Bus, and so on.
One could say that this way the actual logical dependency tree that exists and is understood by the admin or developer is translated and encoded into event and action rules: every logical "a needs b" rule that the administrator/developer is aware of becomes a "start a when b is started" plus "stop a when b is stopped". In some way this certainly is a simplification: especially for the code in Upstart itself. However I would argue that this simplification is actually detrimental. First of all, the logical dependency system does not go away, the person who is writing Upstart files must now translate the dependencies manually into these event/action rules (actually, two rules for each dependency). So, instead of letting the computer figure out what to do based on the dependencies, the user has to manually translate the dependencies into simple event/action rules. Also, because the dependency information has never been encoded it is not available at runtime, effectively meaning that an administrator who tries to figure our why something happened, i.e. why a is started when b is started, has no chance of finding that out.
Furthermore, the event logic turns around all dependencies, from the feet onto their head. Instead of minimizing the amount of work (which is something that a good init system should focus on, as pointed out in the beginning of this blog story), it actually maximizes the amount of work to do during operations. Or in other words, instead of having a clear goal and only doing the things it really needs to do to reach the goal, it does one step, and then after finishing it, it does all steps that possibly could follow it.
Or to put it simpler: the fact that the user just started D-Bus is in no way an indication that NetworkManager should be started too (but this is what Upstart would do). It's right the other way round: when the user asks for NetworkManager, that is definitely an indication that D-Bus should be started too (which is certainly what most users would expect, right?).
A good init system should start only what is needed, and that on-demand. Either lazily or parallelized and in advance. However it should not start more than necessary, particularly not everything installed that could use that service.
Finally, I fail to see the actual usefulness of the event logic. It appears to me that most events that are exposed in Upstart actually are not punctual in nature, but have duration: a service starts, is running, and stops. A device is plugged in, is available, and is plugged out again. A mount point is in the process of being mounted, is fully mounted, or is being unmounted. A power plug is plugged in, the system runs on AC, and the power plug is pulled. Only a minority of the events an init system or process supervisor should handle are actually punctual, most of them are tuples of start, condition, and stop. This information is again not available in Upstart, because it focuses in singular events, and ignores durable dependencies.
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[Upstart]'s main feature is its event-based approach: starting and stopping of processes is bound to "events" happening in the system, where an "event" can be a lot of different things, such as: a network interfaces becomes available or some other software has been started.
Upstart does service serialization via these events: if the syslog-started event is triggered this is used as an indication to start D-Bus since it can now make use of Syslog. And then, when dbus-started is triggered, NetworkManager is started, since it may now use D-Bus, and so on.
One could say that this way the actual logical dependency tree that exists and is understood by the admin or developer is translated and encoded into event and action rules: every logical "a needs b" rule that the administrator/developer is aware of becomes a "start a when b is started" plus "stop a when b is stopped". In some way this certainly is a simplification: especially for the code in Upstart itself. However I would argue that this simplification is actually detrimental. First of all, the logical dependency system does not go away, the person who is writing Upstart files must now translate the dependencies manually into these event/action rules (actually, two rules for each dependency). So, instead of letting the computer figure out what to do based on the dependencies, the user has to manually translate the dependencies into simple event/action rules. Also, because the dependency information has never been encoded it is not available at runtime, effectively meaning that an administrator who tries to figure our why something happened, i.e. why a is started when b is started, has no chance of finding that out.
Furthermore, the event logic turns around all dependencies, from the feet onto their head. Instead of minimizing the amount of work (which is something that a good init system should focus on, as pointed out in the beginning of this blog story), it actually maximizes the amount of work to do during operations. Or in other words, instead of having a clear goal and only doing the things it really needs to do to reach the goal, it does one step, and then after finishing it, it does all steps that possibly could follow it.
Or to put it simpler: the fact that the user just started D-Bus is in no way an indication that NetworkManager should be started too (but this is what Upstart would do). It's right the other way round: when the user asks for NetworkManager, that is definitely an indication that D-Bus should be started too (which is certainly what most users would expect, right?).
A good init system should start only what is needed, and that on-demand. Either lazily or parallelized and in advance. However it should not start more than necessary, particularly not everything installed that could use that service.
Finally, I fail to see the actual usefulness of the event logic. It appears to me that most events that are exposed in Upstart actually are not punctual in nature, but have duration: a service starts, is running, and stops. A device is plugged in, is available, and is plugged out again. A mount point is in the process of being mounted, is fully mounted, or is being unmounted. A power plug is plugged in, the system runs on AC, and the power plug is pulled. Only a minority of the events an init system or process supervisor should handle are actually punctual, most of them are tuples of start, condition, and stop. This information is again not available in Upstart, because it focuses in singular events, and ignores durable dependencies.
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— http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/systemd