Is your example (which I agree, looks cryptic) any less cryptic in systemd?
I asked jippity, and it said this:
[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-04,05,06,09,10,11-01 04..08,11:03/4,05:00
OnCalendar=Sun,Tue,Thu,Sat *-04,05,06,09,10,11-* 04..08,11:03/4,05:00
To which I have to go: "what?"> Things like having control over whether or not long-running jobs are allowed to overlap
With cron that's just prefixing the command with `flock -n <lock>`, but sure the "pick somewhere to put the lock" is probably better with systemd.
> Having to re-write commands and scripts because CRON had its own special PATH
Why? Wouldn't you just put that in the crontab? I don't even see this as different. It's in the cron config or the systemd timer config.
The other improvements you mentioned seem good.