On 2022-08-13 at 17:26:05, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Does FreeBSD offer choices of cron implementations other than Vixie,
> just like some Linux distributions?  If somebody on a non-FreeBSD
> platform happens to choose to use Vixie, then they would presumably
> have the same problem, so a compile-time switch, whose default is
> hardcoded based on the target platform, would not work very well.
> The default will be wrong for some users, and users can later choose
> to switch between different cron implementations.

I'm using Debian unstable, and I'm using Vixie cron.  I believe that's
the default implementation.  However, I could also well use cronie,
since that's available in Debian as well.  So, yeah, I think this is a
thing to consider.

> Configuration knob can be used as a workaround, but in this case, I
> am not sure if it is worth doing.  What's the downside of securely
> opening a temporary file and write whatever we are currently piping
> to a spawned "crontab" command and then giving the path to that
> temporary file to the "crontab" command?  Wouldn't that give us the
> maximal portability without that much code, no?

I think we should try to provide an option which works across at least
the versions on a particular OS.  The temporary file seems like a nice,
portable option, so I think we should just do that unless there's some
practical objection.

If Derrick doesn't get to it this next week, I can send a patch.
-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Toronto, Ontario, CA