Comment 6 for bug 288905

It can be dangerous to step the clock while applications are running (see the fallout from the last couple of leap seconds). Stepping only needs to be done at boot. It makes more sense to just have separate init scripts for both ntpdate and ntp and to order them correctly. Adding ntpdate to the ntp init script would make it impossible to make changes to your ntpd configuration without stepping the clock (again, dangerous) or rebootinng.