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Why so many *arr services? Why not 1 service that works with all media types?

I am almost done building my first self hosted streambox through Docker. That's a total of 16 instances, each fulfilling 1 specific role.

As I'm new to the *arr world, could you please help me understand why it is standard to deploy multiple *arr services for each media type (ex: readarr1 for books + readarr2 for audiobooks) instead of using 1 that does multiple media types?

Thank you.

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  • That's because of the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

    • When I was an up and coming Unix admin, the senior admin told me it was all about "little tools for little jobs", and the OS lets you string them together into whatever solution or outcome you need.

      That was nearly 30 years ago. Still holds true today.

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