[arch-general] Change Arch's default crond

[Sven-Hendrik Haase]

On 08.04.2011 00:15, Kaiting Chen wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 6:32 AM, Heiko Baums <lists at baums-on-web.de> wrote:
>
>> Why do you need vixie cron syntax? Can't you migrate once to a new
>> syntax? Btw., most of fcron's syntax is the same as the syntax of every
>> cron daemon. You can easily take your previous crontabs. You probably
>> have only to do some changes which could most likely be done by sed.
>>
>> In first place you need stability, reliability and useful features. And
>> this is given by fcron. And don't tell me anything about compatibility.
>> I would consider this argument if fcron was a new cron daemon and if
>> it was totally incompatible.
>>
>> Fcron is known since years and it's known to be stable and reliable,
>> while cronie seems to be pretty new. There are absolutely no
>> informations about cronie's features, no documentations, no feature
>> comparisons to other cron daemons, etc. on upstream's website. And it's
>> still in AUR and has only 3 votes there.
>>
> The thing is that cronie is forked from vixie-cron which is much older than
> fcron. And I would venture to say that vixie-cron or some derivative is the
> default crond for the vast majority of distributions out there. --Kaiting.
>
cronie also appears to be the nicest migration choice for users who are
not used to fcron. It seems to support anachron features, cron.d,
daily/weekly/etc, is able to actually keep time and works just like
expected whereas fcron has fcrontab with a slightly different syntax. We
could actually make cronie replace dcron.

fcron would be nice but it is not a drop in like cronie. What do you
say? If you agree, I shall make (or somebody who steps up) a plan to the
replacement and that's that.

-- Sven-Hendrik