= daemon-spawn

* http://github.com/alexvollmer/daemon-spawn

== DESCRIPTION:

Daemon launching and management made dead simple.

With daemon-spawn you can start, stop and restart processes that run
in the background. Processed are tracked by a simple PID file written
to disk.

In addition, you can choose to either execute ruby in your daemonized
process or 'exec' another process altogether (handy for wrapping other
services).

== SYNOPSIS:

=== WRITING A DAEMON:

To create a new spawner, write a class that extends <tt>DaemonSpawn::Base</tt>
and provides +start+ and +stop+ methods. For example:

  class MyServer < DaemonSpawn::Base

    def start(args)
      # process command-line args
      # start your bad self
    end

    def stop
      # stop your bad self
    end
  end

  MyServer.spawn!(:log_file => '/var/log/echo_server.log',
                  :pid_file => '/var/run/echo_server.pid',
                  :sync_log => true,
                  :working_dir => File.dirname(__FILE__))

If you need command-line parameters, any arguments passed after one of
the commands (start, stop, status or restart) will be passed to the
+start+ method.

The <tt>spawn!</tt> method takes a hash of symbolized keys. At a minimum you
_must_ specify the <tt>:working_dir</tt> option. You can also override
the default locations for the log and PID files.

If you pass a <tt>:processes</tt> option to the <tt>spawn!</tt>,
daemon spawn will start that number of processes.

See the <tt>test/servers</tt> directory for working examples.

=== RUNNING A DAEMON:

Let's say that you have the example script listed above in
<tt>bin/my_server</tt>. Here are the commands for starting, querying
the status, restarting and stopping the daemon:

  bin/my_server start
  bin/my_server status
  bin/my_server restart
  bin/my_server stop

Note that if any additional arguments are passed to either
<tt>start</tt> or <tt>restart</tt> those will be passed to the +start+
method of an instance of your daemon class.


== REQUIREMENTS:

None!

== CONTRIBUTIONS:

Feel free to fork this project and send me pull requests with any
changes that you have. Please note that I won't accept any patches
with significant formatting changes or ones without tests.

== INSTALL:

* sudo gem install daemon-spawn

== LICENSE:

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2009 Evri, Inc.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.