Adding rottlog service in ‘%base-services’?

Adding rottlog service in ‘%base-services’?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello Guix!

Should we add rottlog-service and thus mcron-service to
‘%base-services’?  Is log rotation a basic feature that people expect?
WDYT?

If we do so, we would need to document a way to add mcron jobs from the
‘operating-system’ declaration.  People would no longer be able to write
something like this in the ‘services’ field:

  (service mcron-service-type
           (mcron-configuration (jobs (list job1 job2 …))))

Instead, they’d write something like:

  (mcron-jobs (list job1 job2 …))

where:

  (define (mcron-jobs jobs)
    (simple-service 'user-mcron-jobs mcron-service-type jobs))

Thoughts?

Ludo’.

Re: Adding rottlog service in ‘%base-services’?

[ng0]

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Hello Guix!
>
> Should we add rottlog-service and thus mcron-service to
> ‘%base-services’?  Is log rotation a basic feature that people expect?
> WDYT?

What's the size of mcron and its dependency graph of unique packages
which aren't already pulled in through %base-services?

> If we do so, we would need to document a way to add mcron jobs from the
> ‘operating-system’ declaration.  People would no longer be able to write
> something like this in the ‘services’ field:
>
>   (service mcron-service-type
>            (mcron-configuration (jobs (list job1 job2 …))))
>
> Instead, they’d write something like:
>
>   (mcron-jobs (list job1 job2 …))
>
> where:
>
>   (define (mcron-jobs jobs)
>     (simple-service 'user-mcron-jobs mcron-service-type jobs))
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Ludo’.
>
>

-- 

Re: Adding rottlog service in ‘%base-services’?

[David Craven]

> Should we add rottlog-service and thus mcron-service to
> ‘%base-services’?  Is log rotation a basic feature that people expect?
> WDYT?

Why not. There's two sorts of people. The ones that don't care/know
will be happy when things just work and the ones that care/know are
probably defining their own %base-services anyway...

> If we do so, we would need to document a way to add mcron jobs from the
> ‘operating-system’ declaration.  People would no longer be able to write
> something like this in the ‘services’ field.

Mmh... If we do something like this we shouldn't call it mcron-jobs,
otherwise we'll have the same problems like with grub - where all
variables are named grub or grub? or grub.cfg. How about just calling
it jobs?

Re: Adding rottlog service in ‘%base-services’?

[Ludovic Courtès]

David Craven <david@craven.ch> skribis:

>> Should we add rottlog-service and thus mcron-service to
>> ‘%base-services’?  Is log rotation a basic feature that people expect?
>> WDYT?
>
> Why not. There's two sorts of people. The ones that don't care/know
> will be happy when things just work and the ones that care/know are
> probably defining their own %base-services anyway...

Yeah so I think ‘%base-services’ is bound to remain pretty much the same
forever.

And what about adding it to ‘%desktop-services’?  This one is clearly
for people who expect things to work out of the box.

>> If we do so, we would need to document a way to add mcron jobs from the
>> ‘operating-system’ declaration.  People would no longer be able to write
>> something like this in the ‘services’ field.
>
> Mmh... If we do something like this we shouldn't call it mcron-jobs,
> otherwise we'll have the same problems like with grub - where all
> variables are named grub or grub? or grub.cfg. How about just calling
> it jobs?

Not sure I understand the problem.  ‘mcron-jobs’ wouldn’t collide with
anything else AFAICS, and it would be clearer than just ‘jobs’ no?

So related question: putting ‘mcron-service’ in ‘%base-services’?  It
would be a no-op in the absence of job specifications.

Thanks for your feedback,
Ludo’.

Re: Adding rottlog service in ‘%base-services’?

[David Craven]

> Not sure I understand the problem.  ‘mcron-jobs’ wouldn’t collide with
> anything else AFAICS, and it would be clearer than just ‘jobs’ no?

What I mean is that mcron-jobs assumes that the mcron-service is used.
Calling it something general like jobs or cron-jobs wouldn't require
renaming, if someone wants to use a different cron implementation. For
example in an embedded system someone might prefer to use the
busybox/toybox cron implementation. I'm not sure what other job time
scheduling solutions exist. But a job is something that needs to run
at specific times and has a bounded run time. I don't know how cron
specific this feature is, or if the name of the job scheduler it's
relevant as part of an operating-system declaration.

Re: Adding rottlog service in ‘%base-services’?

[Ludovic Courtès]

David Craven <david@craven.ch> skribis:

>> Not sure I understand the problem.  ‘mcron-jobs’ wouldn’t collide with
>> anything else AFAICS, and it would be clearer than just ‘jobs’ no?
>
> What I mean is that mcron-jobs assumes that the mcron-service is used.
> Calling it something general like jobs or cron-jobs wouldn't require
> renaming, if someone wants to use a different cron implementation. For
> example in an embedded system someone might prefer to use the
> busybox/toybox cron implementation. I'm not sure what other job time
> scheduling solutions exist. But a job is something that needs to run
> at specific times and has a bounded run time. I don't know how cron
> specific this feature is, or if the name of the job scheduler it's
> relevant as part of an operating-system declaration.

Oh, I see.  The mcron jobs that we define in GuixSD directly use mcron’s
Scheme API; IOW, we don’t provide any abstraction over what mcron
provides.  Thus it would be really hard to retarget such job specs to
tools other than mcron.

For this reason I think we should keep the ‘mcron-’ prefix here.

Does it make sense?

(The situation is comparable to that of Shepherd services.)

Ludo’.

Re: Adding rottlog service in ‘%base-services’?

[David Craven]

Ah I see. Yes that makes sense...

David

Re: Adding rottlog service in ‘%base-services’?

[Vincent Legoll]

Hello,

On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 10:24 AM, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
> Should we add rottlog-service and thus mcron-service to ‘%base-services’?

I'd say no, or do like OS configurations and provide a %bare-bones-services,
or do it the other way, provide an optional %default-services which adds to
%base-services...

> Is log rotation a basic feature that people expect?

I'd say yes, probably only the embeded people would like a bare-bones system...

-- 
Vincent Legoll