The init systems of the mainstream distros are terribly broken in the name of 'easy' modification.
I would love having the core boot script compiled into a single executable from a simple shell script of &&s, &s, ;s and |s. Rc might be a good choice for the glue as a language easily learnt in minutes by anyone that knows sh. It could call programs written in languages that can perform syscalls without spawning a new process, such as tcpserver. The compiled would probably be linked to 'run' in a directory of its own, for use by supervise.
