Importing djb's public domain daemontools?

[Warner Losh]

On Jan 17, 2012, at 2:33 PM, Jos Backus wrote:
> Let's not dismiss this out of hand.
> 
> Thanks, Warner.
> 
> I'm perfectly willing  to make an effort moving FreeBSD forward in this area once we can achieve consensus on what moving forward means. I don't care about the implementation so much as having the functionality available out of the box. Porting launchd sounds like a good plan.

Sounds like a good idea.  I know the current init stuff is weak and has to be worked around. /etc/rc.d has no interaction with init at this level, which is what the problem is.  init has the ability to keep things alive, but little flexibility.  /etc/rc.d has the ability to launch a bunch of stuff, but little ability to keep things alive.  Any improvement in this area is needed.  launchd is a better solution still, and I look forward to seeing it in the tree if you get it working.

But to reiterate my point: the judgement will be on the result of the work.  If it is done poorly, it may not make it into the tree.  If it turns out that launchd has some fundamental incompatibility with FreeBSD, you may have to do a lot of work for no gain in the tree.  On the other hand, it should work well and likely is less work than integrating daemontools completely into the system (key point here is completely).

Warner