[curun1r]

> how does consul fit into the "Unix philosophy"

- Single binary executable

- Compatible with ps (Zookeeper has the traditional java problem of showing up as .../bin/java followed by 4 lines of classpath)

- Arguments to consul don't need to be prefaced with -D (another common java problem)

- Passing -h to consul actually helps you figure out how to run it.

Oh, and the download is 1/3 the size of Zookeeper, and the executable includes the Go runtime whereas Zookeeper's java runtime is separate.

Etcd is actually much closer to the Unix philosophy. Consul seems to go more in the direction of similar Go tools like Docker where it bundles related activities together into one executable. But, then again, parts of the Unix ecosystem do this to (openssl, for one).