cron(8) improvement

[Allan Jude]

On 2013-11-06 20:49, Mark Felder wrote:
>
> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013, at 18:21, Tim Kientzle wrote:
>> On Nov 5, 2013, at 9:31 AM, Allan Jude <freebsd at allanjude.com> wrote:
>>
>>> This came up in discussion on IRC and I thought I should throw it at the
>>> list so I don't forget.
>>>
>>> A user was asking how to do what linux cron does, where there is a
>>> directory /etc/cron.d/ that packages and add files to to create crontabs.
>>>
>>> Making FreeBSD's cron (Vixie Cron) include /etc/cron.d/ and
>>> /usr/local/etc/cron.d/ in the /etc/crontab format seems like a very
>>> useful feature, especially for pkg(8) as it makes it easy and safe to
>>> programatically add and remove crontabs as part of a package.
>> This is a good idea.  We should do it.
>>
>> How and if this facility gets used is a separate question.
>>
>> "Tools, not policy."
>>
>> Support for a cron.d directory is a tool that can be
>> used in many ways.  The policy of how it should be
>> used is a separate discussion.  (For example, whether
>> or not ports or packages should install crontab files into
>> /usr/local/etc/cron.d/ can be richly debated after that
>> directory exists.)
>>
> Ok, so we create that directory. Now nobody can use it in a port until
> FreeBSD 8.4 is EoL -- approximately June 30, 2015.
>
> We should be using the existing cron tabs directory *now*. We can't
> easily force older versions of FreeBSD to update their cron software or
> configuration to support that new directory.
>
> I'm not saying we shouldn't create it, just that we can't effectively
> use it for 2 years.
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My use case is less about packages, and more about puppet, ansible etc.
Puppet relies on these hideously large markers in the crontab files to
programmatically add/remove crons, whereas a cron.d directory could be
done nice and clean

And in that case, the fact that it is not supported on 8.x does not
bother me.

-- 
Allan Jude


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