Rethinking cron

I guess I'm not the only one that doesn't like cron much (except, you know, the part about how it always works). Alternatives for many purposes appear to be in the category of job queuing systems, so that should probably be examined at some point under the "system architecture" rubric.

Also, here's a Python job scheduler inspired by this article. ("Job scheduling for humans.")

Win32::Daemon

Since Windows services provide some of the functionality that Unix just uses cron for, the service manager should be part of Schedule::Universal. Win32::Daemon really seems to do everything you want, here.

Scheduling

One of the real-life things that comes up all the time, and there's no convenient way to work with it, especially cross-platform. So, a twofold proposal:

Part the first: Schedule::Universal - a proposed cross-platform Perl API for both cron and the Windows Task Scheduler, along with at (on both platforms) and a way to set up a scheduling process of your own. In other words, one-stop shopping for scheduling.

Part the second: Schedule::Declarative - the declarative front for S::U; put a schedule into your system definition and you're already done scheduling your tasks.