dmd -0.9 released

[Wolfgang Jaehrling]

Announcement: dmd -0.9
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About this release:
This is the first public (and thus alpha-like) release of dmd, the
`Daemon managing Daemons' (or `Daemons-managing Daemon'?).  I am using
it in a productive environment and it works well so far, but still I
recommend it only for the *very* curious at this point.

About the software:
The dmd program is a service manager, i.e. on the GNU system (which is
the primary target), it replaces /sbin/init completely, on systems
which are similar to Unix (e.g. GNU/Linux) it replaces the part of
/sbin/init that is responsible for switching runlevels (/etc/rc?.d and
/etc/init.d come to mind), respawning services (/etc/inittab comes to
mind) and similar things.

Get it from <http://www.8ung.at/shell/dmd--0.9.tar.gz>.

Features of dmd, version -0.9:
* Services can depend on other services, conflict with other services,
  and provide virtual services.  Dependencies are resolved
  automatically, of course.  Respawning of services is supported as
  well.
* A command line tool (called `deco') for conveniently starting and
  stopping services (and performing many other actions on them) is
  part of the dmd distribution.
* The documentation is mostly complete.
* It is entirely written in Guile, therefore the configuration is also
  done with a Guile script.
* It can not only be used as the system-wide service manager, but also
  by unprivileged users, if desired.  So if you want to test it, you
  are not required to do things which might destroy your existing
  system.

It is written for Guile 1.6 and uses GOOPS.  If I am not mistaken,
there has been a API change in Guile's socket interface that will
cause it to not work with Guile 1.4.  I might add support for Guile
1.4 when I have some time and feel it's worth it.

Various things will be added in the future, including runlevels, an
update-rc.d implementation for Debian, support for existing SysV Init
infrastructure, internationalization, evaluating configuration code in
a sandbox and improvements to the user interface (so that you get the
results of your commands directly on the terminal where you executed
deco, not only where dmd was started).

For those brave enough to look at the source code, I want to note that
various things in there are just temporary hacks which will be changed
on demand when it becomes necessary to cleanly implement a new
feature.  Hey, what do you expect from software with such a version
number?


I know that a few people will object to using Guile for this kind of
software, but this program is not intended for use in embedded systems
with 4 MB flash memory, but for use in general-purpose systems, where
a few MB of required storage do not matter compared to all the
databases, Ogg Vorbis files or whatever...