Importing djb's public domain daemontools?

[Doug Barton]

On 01/16/2012 22:32, Jos Backus wrote:

> I want/need a solution that works in (nearly) all cases and is devoid of
> complex code trying to track state that is already represented elsewhere
> in the system (the process table and the parent/child process
> relationship). I want a solution that can reliably handle a crashing
> server that doesn't clean up its pidfile (the finish script
> functionality in daemontools-encore provides this),

We get it, you want daemontools. It's in the ports, you can have it.

> and I want a unified
> control interface for the services running on a box,

rc.d provides that, and service(8) makes that easier.

> a la launchd or what have you.

We've looked at importing launchd, or something like it. It's not a bad
idea, it's just way more complex than it sounds. And a lot more work
than "hey, let's import daemontools."

If we were going to do something like this I think we should properly
spec out what the goals should be, what the available solutions are, and
what we want our ultimate solution to look like when we're done.

> This isn't about religion but about missing base system
> functionality - the ability to reliably control services running on a box.

And my argument is that we already have that in the base, it's just not
the one you want; and since it's not the one you want you're redefining
"reliably" to suit your needs.

> I thought the motto was  "tools, not policies" ;)

Right now you have options (or tools if you will). If the base were
redesigned to use daemontools it would be very difficult to retain those
options.

>     And lest people think that I'm just hating on daemontools, I'm not. I
>     use it for some things. But converting everything in the base to use it
>     is a non-starter, even if we wanted to import it, which I don't see any
>     need to do.
> 
> 
> Straw man. I'm asking for FreeBSD to *support* this functionality out of
> the box, just like OS X, Solaris, AIX and some Linux versions (with
> systemd).

If you can come up with patches to make both options possible out of the
box, I'm sure that people would be interested in reviewing them.

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