On Friday 09 February 2007, Roy Marples wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 14:49:57 -0700
>
> "Daniel Robbins" <drobbins.daniel@...> wrote:
> > In other words:
> >
> > busybox + single rcS file = fastest and simplest, smallest, best for
> > very small filesystems, not as flexible
> >
> > bash + gentoo baselayout = most flexible, biggest, slower, best for
> > feature-rich systems
> >
> > busybox + gentoo baselayout = ?
>
> FreeBSD sh + Gentoo baselayout = cold boot in around 4 seconds
> Going to multi-user from single user after a boot is under 2 seconds
> (times measured from when init starts rc - the difference is probably
> because the all my local mounts are still mounted)
>
> I have this running on a 2Ghz P4 Laptop right now. Admittedly, no
> network scripts are started expect for the loopback interface, but all
> default scripts + openvpn, ssh, dnsmasq, metalog and vixie-cron are
> started.
>
> Ladies and gentlemen, this has always been about one thing - speed.
> Ever since I got my 300Mhz Sparc64 to play around with FreeBSD, I've
> realised that baselayout + bash is just too damn slow.
>
> I think that's worth it.

If that's what you want, don't use bash in the first place. I would agree that 
using bash for parsing is a pain in the but Daniel is right in that you're 
not going to be able to maintain posix compatibility. If you find an 
acceptable way to add the functionality to the network configuration files, 
it is ok, but sacrificing usability over an unmaintainable improvement 
doesn't work. 

If you want to speed up boot, the dependency generation is probably what's 
eating most time.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@g.o
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net