Comment by okanat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by okanat | Hacker News Reader

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Arch/pacman will tell you config changes. There is even an utility called pacdiff to review all of them at once. It will not restart service files since it is a more hands-on distro. Since Arch is a quick rolling-release distro, it is better to reboot your system since ABI stability is not guaranteed.

Arch/pacman packages are quite simple which makes the maintenance burden less. However, when compared to more mainstream distros like OpenSUSE and Fedora, Debian's package recipes are more unwieldy and arcane. Why do we need to put things in the upstream source in the first place? Why do we use scripts that don't make sense and full of legacy in 2025?

I deal with Yocto almost daily, still most Debian packages are a mistery to me. Don't even mention things like getting an almost upstream Linux kernel (like a vanilla release + some patches on top) to be ported as a normal Debian package.

Is telling systemd to reload .service files after changing them a "script that doesn't make sense" to you?

Makes plenty of sense to me.

90% of the scripts are to do that, or to recompile .pyc files when you install a new module or when you install a new version of python.

Arch tries to generally avoid changing "default" behavior. Systemd doesn't automatically do that, so Arch won't ship systemd like that. Arch also generally avoids shipping with timers enabled.

Out of lazyness or out of actual usefulness to the users?

I personally (using Arch, btw) definitely prefer Arch's behaviour. If I update or install a daemon, I generally want to configure it before (re)starting it.

Restarting it and telling systemd the .service unit has been changed aren't the same thing.

Arch does daemon-reload after service file update: `(2/5) Reloading system manager configuration...`

A little of column A, a little of column B. Arch is very much a distro developed for the packagers. OTOH, as someone who often has to dive into the details regardless of distro, I generally appreciate the plain-vanilla approach to arch's packaging (since I can just set the package up as opposed to undoing whatever helpful defaults and changes Debian's decided to add).

Arch does reload service files (not user ones though) IIRC. I also disagree with GP, I don't reboot, I use needsrestart and/or my own logic (simple grep for "(deleted)" within proc maps and then show cmdline).

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