You might have to give it a few short cranks to get the fuel pumps to bring fuel to the engine, but it doesn't take that long and that's about all there is to it.

As Brett said, some diesels used to be that way. In a lot of automotive applications, though, like his and my VW diesels and Volvo diesels, they made the diesel injection pumps self-purging, since they figured people would run out of fuel more in cars, than they do while driving trucks, heavy equipment, boats, etc... where a lot of pumps are STILL manually primed.
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Chris Herbst, in Wisconsin.