Bug 65733

Summary:	RFE: Appending to unit file directives
Product:	systemd	Reporter:	Michael Stapelberg <michael+freedesktop>
Component:	general	Assignee:	systemd-bugs
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	systemd-bugs
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Michael Stapelberg 2013-06-13 20:38:03 UTC

With the .include mechanism, I can overwrite or delete the contents of a directive, e.g.:

.include /lib/systemd/system/codesearch.service
ExecStart=/usr/bin/codesearch -verbose

What I cannot do currently is extending the old value, e.g.:

.include /lib/systemd/system/codesearch.service
ExecStart=$ExecStart -verbose

This would be helpful (and at least two other people on #systemd also wished for it when I asked).

Lennart (et al), is that something you’d accept? If so, how precisely should it work? I.e. how should one refer to the old value? A format string value? A pseudo-variable? A prefix of some sort?

Let me know and I’ll be happy to provide a patch.

Comment 1 Lennart Poettering 2013-09-12 18:10:13 UTC

So, humm. not sure.

This isn't that easy I fear, as ExecStart= may be used multiple times in Type=oneshot units, and which one would you replace then?

Also, I can see the ebenfit of extending command lines, but I wouldn't want to make this too flexible, so the only thing that would be OK I think would be to allow a syntax like ExecStart+= or ExecStart=+ to append to the end...

But still, I don't see how the multiple ExecStart= assignment issue could be dealt with. Ideas?

Comment 2 Michael Stapelberg 2013-09-14 00:48:44 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> So, humm. not sure.
> 
> This isn't that easy I fear, as ExecStart= may be used multiple times in
> Type=oneshot units, and which one would you replace then?
> [...]
> But still, I don't see how the multiple ExecStart= assignment issue could be
> dealt with. Ideas?
Can we simply make this fail when there is more than one ExecStart= directive, given that there is no good way of handling that situation anyway?

Comment 3 Zbigniew Jedrzejewski-Szmek 2019-08-22 10:37:39 UTC

Some time has passed... We are not going to add a mechanism to extend existing lines. Where this makes sense, we generally allow lists to be extended with new items.

> Can we simply make this fail when there is more than one ExecStart= directive, given that there is no good way of handling that situation anyway?

This is implemented since ages.

Let's close.

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