On 10/13/2017 10:19 AM, Anand Buddhdev wrote:
.. Stop trying to force a square peg into a round hole.
Whee, I just _know_ I'm going to be positively skewered (and maybe even plonked!) for this.... but, hey, it's Friday, and this post is meant to be a bit funny. So lighten up, and enjoy a short read.
obHumor: I actually have a piece of furniture (a small table) with square pegs in round holes. The spaces between the sides of the square peg and the round hole are filled with a color-contrasting glue, and the result is rather pretty. :-) I intentionally picked this furniture specifically because of the square pegs in the round holes.....
obHistory: Cobblers making boots back in the mid to late 1800's would often use square wooden pegs in round leather holes (typically for the thick leather soles of the boots) so that the peg would 'swage' it's own hole and fit tighter, thus holding better than a round peg ever could. (Reference: "Farmer Boy", Laura Ingalls Wilder, Chapter titled 'Cobbler' (hey, I have five kids; my wife and I have read through the whole series five times!) which, after reading through it with my eldest child back in 2000 or so I decided to never use the 'square pegs in rounds holes' proverb ever again!). (There are other historical instances of square pegs being better for round holes than round pegs, especially when you didn't want the peg to rotate in the hole).
Anyway, a form of pseudo-persistence that meets the OP's needs is already supported directly by systemd-tmpfiles, which is a part of the core systemd package and non-optional, so your vehement disagreement is moot, sorry. The round hole already has a square-peg adapter, at least in CentOS 7. Packagers just need to select the proper 'adapter' for systemd-tmpfiles; the adaptation is not (and should not be, in my opinion) automatic.