This page is meant to discuss the requirements and design of a new Sling launcher.
It was created in September 2014 to help build consensus about such a launcher.
Current status
The current launchpad/runnable jar approach does not seem ideal for modern operations where one wants to drive the creation and configuration of Sling instances from (structured) text files that can be managed in Git or other source code control systems, for programmable infrastructure (aka devops).
The experimental Crankstart launcher was created in early 2014 to support some Sling operations / cluster prototypes: Artyom Stetsenko's prototype and Bertrand's Docker/Sling cluster playground.
Carsten has started work on a Slingstart launcher which consists of a Maven plugin and, for now, a set of example definition files.