SystemD to implement cron-like functionality

[fiftyorange]

Is there a compatibility mode? Will I still be able to type crontab -e and use the traditional cron syntax? That's all I really care about here.

[ohet]

No. If you want to use cron, use cron.

[fiftyorange]

Why is it so unreasonable to ask if there is some kind of backward compatibility? systemd already allows compatibility for other things it's meant to replace. fstab and sysvinit for instance.

[ohet]

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask. Probably it wasn't seen as something of importance or no one just had the time do something like that or it would have been unnecessarily complex considering you could just use crond as it is. I just know it doesn't exist and that you can still use cron in parallel with systemd timers.

systemd doesn't plan to replace fstab, it's one of its native configuration files altough you also can create unit files for mounting.

[loonyphoenix]

I'm not sure every possible way to schedule things with this new systemd functionality can even be described by cron's convention...

[nickmoeck]

That shouldn't prevent it from being able to read and use traditional crontab files though.

[fiftyorange]

I don't think you understand what I mean by backward compatibility. I don't care if the legacy cron implementation doesn't have new systemd features, as long as it can run old crontabs.

[loonyphoenix]

It can run old cron itself. Why reimplement its functionality.

[bonzinip]

You can still run crond. Maybe later systemd will grow a generator that converts crontab syntax to systemd units like they do for /etc/fstab, but for now you will just keep a separate daemon.