initscripts

* Slackware doesn't include an equivalent to /etc/rc.d/rc.subr, which means there's a lot of boilerplate in its initscripts.

The good news is that you don't have to implement initscripts as shell scripts.

I recall at least one GNU/Linux distro that used Python for all its initscripts, for example.

SysVInit and BSD-style rc-based init both have a distinct lack of hard requirements on how initscripts are implemented, so long as said scripts are valid executables.

The nice thing about initscripts, though, is that you can get the best of both worlds by sourcing in common functions, as is the default and recommended practice on OpenBSD.

The biggest point, though, is that because of this, if your only goal is to have terse daemon configuration with a minimum of boilerplate, you can have that without having to learn at minimum two languages (one to write your initscripts and one to do all the rest of your day-to-day administration tasks).

In the BSD world (at least with OpenBSD, where I'm most experienced), this isn't the case at all; OpenBSD ships with /etc/rc.d/rc.subr, which one can (and should) source into one's initscripts to make life much easier than even (in my experience) systemd's unit files.

That doesn't change the fact that "OMG initscripts are so verbose with so much boilerplate; my unit files are so much better" is a commonly-cited reason for people to prefer systemd over other init systems, never mind that said reasoning is plainly false.

> the fact that "OMG initscripts are so verbose with so much boilerplate; my unit files are so much better" is a commonly-cited reason for people to prefer systemd over other init systems, never mind that said reasoning is plainly false Indeed, I agree with that.

Initscripts have their limitations, but the most glaring issues with them (lots of boilerplate, hard to write, etc.) have been resolved in BSD Land for quite a while, thanks to things like rc.subr.