Buck Evan:
For example, I'd like to encode the fact that I don't expect service A to be able to come up before service B.
In nosh, the filesystem is the database. This is an ordering, not a dependency. One can separately encode in nosh (a) that start of service B will cause the start of service A, and (b) that start of service A has to be scheduled after the start of service B rather than in parallel. The latter is an ordering. And it's a symbolic link, either A/after/B pointing to B or B/before/A pointing to A. The former is a symbolic link B/wants/A pointing to A.
This is a very brief precis. There's a detailed explanation of service bundles and all of the subdirectories in them in the manual. Start with "man system-control". Or even "man manual/system-control.1" if you haven't been brave enough to actually export the software into /usr/local. (-:
The most widespread general purpose practice for "breaking" (i.e. avoiding) this kind of ordering is of course opening server sockets early. Client and server then don't need to be so strongly ordered.
