[arch-general] Replace dcron once again?

[Heiko Baums]

Am Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:10:12 +0900
schrieb Alex Matviychuk <alexmat at gmail.com>:

> I agree, however, it sounds a bit odd to say that we should replace a
> simple package with a more complicated one in the hope the more
> complicated one will screw us over less going forward. We're just as
> bound to the idiosyncrasies and bugs of fcron as dcron, but with the
> added complexity of fcron.

I'm not really a cron expert, but fcron is not more complicated than
dcron, it's just more feature-rich, more flexible, has more ways to
configure, can be configured more precisely in my estimation. But fcron
is as easy or hard to configure as dcron.

It's fact that the fcron package is bigger than dcron but it has some
more configuration files with which e.g. access privileges can be
granted and a comprehensive documentation in plain text, HTML and
several manpages. But this documentation can be very helpful for people
who are not that familiar with cron daemons in general and fcron in
particular.

There's probably one thing that could be changed in the fcron package to
reduce the size. The complete documentation is in English as well as in
French. Nothing against France, but the French documentation could
probably be removed from the package.

All in all fcron looks a bit more mature in my view.

Heiko