I think you actually probably want type=oneshot (and also RemainAfterExit=yes) for the kind of service you're describing
This was ultimately what I needed to do when I wrote a systemd service that managed some firewall rules. It really was a footgun though, what with having essentially different meanings/purposes for ExecStop whether you’re doing a Type=forking, a Type=oneshot, or a Type=oneshot with RemainAfterExit=yes.
And relatedly, I honestly have no idea when I’d want to use ExecStartPre, or multiple ExecStarts, or ExecStartPost, and so on.
Having different semantics with different proprieties on the same command is really confusing.
I would argue the semantics of ExecStop are always the same. It's the command that's executed to stop the service. On the other hand, what it means for a service to be "running" or "stopping" naturally depends on what type of service it is (i.e., is it a daemon or not?)
> the command that's executed to stop the service
That’s what is assumed. But in reality it runs after the started process stops.
Yes, so whether the service is stopping as a result of the process exiting, or whether you requested the service to stop manually, it will run the ExecStop in either case.
That makes sense to me personally. What would be the more intuitive design in your mind?
Stopping as a result of the process exiting or requested the service to stop are two very different things. Systemd overloads the term ExecStop for different semantics, relying on different property settings. That's where the confusion comes from.
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It's been enlightening to me to read through some of the distro-provided .service files to see what can be done, with services I'm more of less familiar with.