Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2022 07:48:02 +0200
From: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
To: Jordan Christiansen <xordspar0@gmail.com>
Cc: ~alpine/users@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: Origin of /etc/periodic in Alpine
Message-ID: <20220822074802.06c30827@ncopa-desktop.lan>
In-Reply-To: <OBDXGR.9XFNW2FMQYJT2@gmail.com>
References: <OBDXGR.9XFNW2FMQYJT2@gmail.com>
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Hi,

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 12:45:24 -0500
Jordan Christiansen <xordspar0@gmail.com> wrote:

> Does anyone know the history of /etc/periodic in Alpine? As far as I 
> know, periodic was invented by FreeBSD[1], and I haven't found any 
> other systems that support it, not even other BSDs. I think the 
> implementation of periodic in Alpine[2] is very simple and elegant. 
> FreeBSD's implementation may have a couple extra features, but it's 
> also a standalone program with an associated config file. In Alpine, 5 
> lines in the default crontab are enough to give us 95% of the features.
> 
> Whose idea was this? Does any other Linux distro support periodic?
> 
> [1]: 
> https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=periodic&manpath=FreeBSD+13.1-RELEASE+and+Ports
> [2]: 
> https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/blob/master/main/alpine-baselayout/crontab

Many ideas from early days of Alpine comes from FreeBSD. /etc/periodic is one of them.

I wanted something that felt like *BSD, but had linux kernel with the better hardware support.

Also first iteration of apk-tools was based on FreeBSD's pkg_add.
http://apk-tools.sourceforge.net

-nc