File	Date	Author	Commit
examples	2009-11-06	Jeremy Fincher	[bac87f] Initial commit for release.
finitd	2010-01-19	Jeremy Fincher	[019388] Fixed log writing to open the descriptors O_APP...
COPYRIGHT	2009-11-06	Jeremy Fincher	[bac87f] Initial commit for release.
README	2009-11-06	Jeremy Fincher	[7d370a] Added README, fixed a few bugs in ArbitraryComm...
setup.py	2009-11-09	Jeremy Fincher	[8ddc5f] Bumped the version number.

Read Me

Though more documentation should be forthcoming, this basic README
will have to do for now.

I really hate writing init.d scripts.  They're always a bunch of
arcane /bin/sh invocations and I usually find the end results to be
less reliable than the majority of other tools I use.

So instead, I wrote finitd (pronounced "fin it dee" or "eff initd").
It is a configuration file interpreter: you write a basic
configuration file explaining what command you want to run, where you
want to redirect its stdin/stdout, etc. (basically all the options you
would consider writing writing a program which daemonizes itself) and
finitd will interpret that configuration file and act as an init.d
script, with standard start/stop/restart commands (and a few others).

finitd has a few additional features, though.  If configured to
"watch" the process it spawns, it will daemonize, fork and exec the
configured process, and then wait on it, optionally taking action
(such as restarting the process) when the process exits.  This allows
finitd to be a more reliable "babysitter" for processes than many
other such (typically homegrown) programs which grep through `ps`
output, etc.

To do your own experiments with finitd, just run "finitd /dev/null
annotate" and finitd will output an annotated configuration file
showing all the variables and describing their function.  /dev/null
here functions as finitd's configuration file, since that must be the
first argument to finitd.  Alternatively, finitd can receive its
configuration on the command line: finitd /dev/null --help will
explain that.

You can configure additional commands (e.g., for a "graceful" stop, or
a "fullstatus" command) by adding them to the
"finitd.commands.arbitrary" group.  These commands will run in the
same exact environment as all other commands, and so may be useful for
debugging issues with your finitd configuration file: if you want to
see the current directory your finitd script is running in, you can
add the following line to your configuration file:
"finitd.commands.arbitrary.pwd.command: pwd".