I don’t follow this logic. I’ve written unit files and they can be very easy, but when you start looking at something like postgres on Debian and want to move it to another directory, then suddenly you’ll see all the hacks that have been employed to make it work.

Stuff like running /bin/true for the non-versioned unit, so that it can coerce the activation to take it sequentially when it actually executes the versioned unit.

There’s also the fact that “no boot is exactly the same” which means reproducing a race condition at boot is basically impossible if it’s anything other than the most trivial.

And anyway. The truth here is that you haven’t actually removed the shell script. You’ve just added boilerplate C-code around it.

If your biggest complaint is/was the composability of shell scripts for the common use-case then this is very much a solved problem in the BSDs (where an init script is usually around 5 lines).

EDIT: please come back with some concrete examples of why I'm wrong. because not only would I like to resolve my own issues; it is also the case that you shouldn't be using downvotes as a "I love systemd so I disagree" button.

I never had an issue with sysv, but there are several modern init systems such as runit and openrc that don't require selling your soul. Systemd extends tentacles throughout a system in ways that make me question how anyone ever thought it was a good idea.