dinit/NEWS

== Version ???

* TBA

== Version 0.18.0 (beta release #3)

This is a beta release focused on improving user experience, which also introduces some minor new
features.

Thanks to current sponsors: Paweł Zmarzły, Wesley Moore, brazeon, q66

Changes:
 * For user instances, if the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment is set, dinit now looks for services in
   $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dinit.d/ in addition to $HOME/.config/dinit.d (if they are different paths).
   Implemented by Oliver Amann.   
   Note that Dinit does not, and most likely never will, fully support the (flawed) XDG Base
   Directory Specification.

New features:
 * dinitcheck now supports an "online" mode of operation (--online, -n) in which it will query the
   service directories and service manager environment from a running dinit instance.
 * In dinit-monitor: support reporting initial service status, and using alternative
   (user-supplied) wording for status texts. Thanks to James Knippes (helican).
 * For service descriptions, a new form of variable expansion is available. When written as
   "$/NAME" (or "$/{NAME}") the variable value undergoes word splitting and whitespace
   collapse. This is convenient for allowing optional command line arguments to be specified via
   the environment, for example.

Fixes:
 * Fix a latent control protocol processing issue (does not affect dinitctl).
 * Various minor improvements to error messages, designed to provide a better end-user experience.
 * Fixes to minor build issues in Meson build (Mobin Aydinfar).

== Version 0.17.1 (beta release #2)

This is a 2nd beta release to follow up from 0.17.0. The changes are mostly minor; they include
some bug fixes, and some behavioural changes, that are listed below; there are also new options
for controlling logging.

New features:
 * The console log level, and primary log facility (syslog or logfile) log level, can now be
   specified via the new "--console-level" and "--log-level" options. See the documentation
   in the dinit(8) man page. 

Changes:
 * The log file is opened immediately when starting even as a system manager, if possible. This
   can make it easier to debug boot issues.
 * The working directory for a service is now the directory containing the service description.
   This can simplify specifying configuration files/script locations etc. Implemented by
   q66.
 * The env-file (environment) path for a service is now relative to the service directory
   containing the service description. Implemented by q66.
 * Failure to open the env-file (environment) specified for a service is now treated as a hard
   error (and will prevent a service starting). Implemented by Mobin Aydinfar.
 
Fixes:
 * A service that restarted too often, too quickly but which was a dependency of another service
   also set to restart did not trigger the restart limit check; this has been fixed.
 * Process services with the smooth-recovery option and with readiness notification did not check
   that readiness notification was received after a smooth restart.
 * Don't report ECONNRESET errors in control connections. These indicate that the client closed
   the connection (possibly by terminating) and do not need to be reported. This prevents a
   spurious warning on shutdown.
 * Give an error when a service is specified as its own output consumer (avoids crash).
   Thanks to Mobin Aydinfar. 
 * A better effort to make the symlink created during a "dinitctl enable" operation actually point
   to the enabled service. (This has no effect on operation).
 * Various command line switches which require an additional argument (eg -d, -l) now check that
   the argument supplied is now empty.
 * configure script improvements/fixes by Mobin Aydinfar, and by Roze061

== Version 0.17.0 (beta release #1)

Thank you to several new sponsors, as well as existing sponsors, for supporting this release.
Current sponsors include github users: brentfrow, brazeon, and q66 (founder of Chimera Linux).
Development of Dinit has also received financial support from Artix Linux.
I am grateful for all the support, both financial and otherwise, that has been received.

Special thanks to Mobin Aydinfar, who has taken on secondary maintainer duties in the lead-up to
this release, including many valuable contributions to getting CI infrastructure up-and-running.

New features:
 * A "log-type" service setting allows for control over how a service output is processed. A new
   "buffer" type allows capturing service output to an in-memory buffer; this may be useful for
   service started early, before any logging daemon is available. The buffer contents can be
   inspected via a new dinitctl subcommand, "catlog". See dinit-service(5) and dinitctl(8). Other
   log-type settings are "none", "file" (log to file as in previous versions) and "pipe" which
   allows piping output to another (process) service - read on for details.
 * Output from a service process can now be chained to another process (in another service).
   This allows one service to act as a logging agent for another, for example. The consumer
   service need not be started at the same time as the producer process; the pipe between them can
   be created early if needed, and will persist if either end dies (so restarting a logging agent
   without losing log messages should be possible in theory). The "consumer-of" service setting,
   specified in the consumer, creates the connection between the services; the producer must have
   log-type of "pipe".
 * New "triggered" service type, similar to "internal" except that it requires an external
   trigger before it will start (start of a triggered service is delayed until the external
   trigger is received). One potential use is to start services after hardware device nodes become
   available (eg, start dhcp client on a network interface once it is available).
 * New "dinictl" subcommand, "signal", to send a signal to a service process. See dinitctl(8).
   Implemented by James Knippes and Mobin Aydinfar.
 * New "kill-all-on-stop" service option will cause dinit to kill all (other) processes just
   before stopping the service. This can be used to ensure a cleaner system state and that
   filesystems can be unmounted (for example). Use with care; see dinit-service(5) for details.
 * The "shutdown" utility now runs (if present) user-provided shutdown hooks; see shutdown(8) for
   details.
 * New service settings to control service logfile ownership and permissions: logfile-permissions,
   logfile-uid, and logfile-gid. Note that these have default values, which results in a change in
   behaviour from previous versions even if they are not specified in a service description (i.e.
   the logfile ownership and permissions are now always set).
 * A new "--offline" option for dinitctl enables using "enable" and "disable" subcommands to
   enable/disable services when dinit is not running.
 * "before" and "after" ordering requirements in service descriptions no longer force the named
   service to be loaded. This means that a service can be "before" another service even if the
   other service might not be installed, for example.
 * New "dinitctl" subcommands "is-started" and "is-failed", to test for specific service statuses
   (intended to be useful in scripts, for example). Contributed by q66.
 * The "dinitctl" utility now supports the "--use-passed-cfd" argument (as for shutdown).
 * A "configure" script to generate suitable build configuration is included. It is used by
   default when building on not-recognised systems. Contributed by Mobin Aydinfar.
 * Meson build system added (as an alternative to the existing makefile-based build) by Mobin
   Aydinfar.

Changes:
 * The default is now to restart services automatically (previously required "restart = yes").
 * The permissions/ownership for logfiles has been reworked, see details in "New features" above.
 * Services which specify "run-as" to run as a different user now run with the supplementary
   groups of that user (this can be disabled at build time by setting USE_INITGROUPS=0).
   Thanks to q66.
 * Environment variables from the service-specific environment ("env-file" setting) can now be
   substituted in many service settings. Variable expansion now supports a limited subset of shell
   expansions (such as "$(NAME:-word}" and "${NAME:+word}). Behaviour is not identical to shell;
   see documentation. Implemented by q66.
 * Environment variable expansion in service descriptions is no longer optional. The "sub-vars"
   load option no in a service description no longer has any effect, and "no-sub-vars" is no
   longer recognised at all.
 * "/run/dinit.d" is now included in the default set of directories search for service description
   files (in system mode).
 * Some service defaults, including automatic restart, can now be configured at build time
   (contributed by Mobin Aydinfar).

Fixes:
 * A bug in Dasynq which caused out-of-bounds vector access in dinit on shutdown has been fixed.
 * Fixed a dinit bug that could cause communication on a control socket to block indefinitely,
   which could theoretically cause dinitctl to hang (no cases of dinitctl hanging have been
   reported by users!).

== Version 0.16.1

(Bugfix release for 0.16.0)

This release contains bug fixes for the previous release.

Changes:
 * Fix issue where dependencies could stop before there dependents had stopped.
 * Fix issue where startup could fail if control socket location was not writable when
   dinit started.
 * Fix for dinitctl crashing due to an exception when a service description contained
   certain syntactical errors.
 * Fix nonsensical (but harmless) error message when loading services (when the service
   description is found in a directory that is not the first directory searched)
   (q66).
 * Fix issue with example rootfscheck.sh script (Mobin Aydinfar).
 * Minor build system improvements (q66).
 * Minor documentation updates.

== Version 0.16.0

(Alpha release #8)

This release contains some new features and bug fixes.

Changes:
 * "before" and "after" relationships can now be specified for services. These can be used to
   control startup order without creating explicit dependencies between services.
 * The "restart" command of dinitctl will now also restart hard dependents if the "--force"
   option is used (previously the "--force" option was ignored, and the command would fail if
   a dependent blocked the restart). Changes contributed by Duncan Overbruck.
 * The "-t" (or "--service") command-line option has been implemented to allow unambiguously
   specifying that the next argument is a service name. This can be used when booting Linux to
   select a target service or services (dinit otherwise ignores potential service names in this
   scenario, since the Linux kernel sometimes passes through kernel options to init).
   Implemented by Mobin Aydinfar.
 * The dinit daemon itself supports S6-compatible readiness notification (for when run under
   another supervision system or controlling process). The "-r <fd>" command line argument
   specifies the file descriptor to write the notification to. Contributed by q66.
 * Environment files (including per-service file as specified by env-file service setting):
   support for commands !clear, !unset and !import. These give more flexibility in how much of the
   original environment to expose to service processes. See the dinit(8) man page for more
   information.
 * The dinitctl utility provides more information if a service fails to start (avoiding the need
   to query the status separately or check logs to get the same information).
 * Fix bug with cgroup root path extraction where the path was longer than 64 characters (found
   by Github continuous integration builds as implemented by Mobin Aydinfar).
 * Fix bad pointer bug manifesting with very short command strings (reported by Duncan Overbruck).
 * Reloading a service now checks for (and disallows) cyclic dependencies.
 * Minor fix to service examples, contributed by Firas Khalil Khana.
 * Various minor build/install fixes.

Other:
 * Github continuous integration was set up by Mobin Aydinfar 
 
== Version 0.15.1

(Alpha release #7)

This contains minor fixes for the previous release.

Changes:
 * Remove extra newline which was printed after service description error log messages.
 * Install dinit-monitor as part of "make install".

== Version 0.15.0

(Alpha release #6)

This release contains bug fixes and new features.

Changes:
 * New "dinit-monitor" command can be used to perform notifications (via an external command, such
   as notify-send) when a service changes state. This is primarily intended for users running dinit
   in "user mode" rather than for system instances of dinit, although it works in either case. See
   the dinit-monitor(8) manual page for details.
 * Support on Linux for running service processes in a cgroup, via the "runs-in-cgroup" service
   setting. Cgroups must be mounted/created outside of dinit (eg via an early service), there is no
   support for this in dinit itself. See the dinit-service(5) manual page for details.
 * "dinitctl enable", "dinitctl disable" and "dinitctl rmdep" now give better feedback in various
   situations. For example, "dinitctl disable" will warn if a disabled service has other
   dependents (which may cause it to start anyway).
 * When parse errors occur in service description files, the relevant line number should now be
   reported (by dinitcheck, or in the dinit log).
 * Environment variable substitution in command lines is now performed for the "stop-command"
   setting in exactly the same way as for the "command" setting. Previously, by oversight,
   substitution was not performed for the "stop-command" setting.
 * Fix: start timeout was not being honoured for service restarts.

== Version 0.14.0

(Alpha release #5)

This release contains bug fixes and a new feature.

Changes:
 * "stop-command" service parameter can now be applied to process and bgprocess services. If
   specified for these service types, the specified command is used to stop the service.
 * "dinitctl status" now reports launch stage and error for services which failed to execute.
   Example output:
   
       $ src/dinitctl status mpd
       Service: mpd
           State: STOPPED (could not be launched)
               Stage: executing command
               Error: No such file or directory
   
 * Fixes bug where "dinitctl status" command would sometimes report an error.
 * Fixes a (situational, unlikely) bug where a bgprocess state could get stuck.
 * Fixes a potential memory corruption / crash bug occurring in out-of-memory situations when
   adding a dependency to a service (via "dinitctl reload" or "dinitctl add-dep").

== Version 0.13.0

NOTE: This release has some minor backwards-incompatible changes. Please read
these notes carefully.

This release includes changes contributed by q66.

Changes:
 * A new dinitctl subcommand, "status", can be used to query extended status
   information for an individual service.
 * The default directory for user services has moved to ~/.config/dinit.d
   (rather than ~/dinit.d).
 * Some service settings now expand environment variables (given in the form
   $VARNAME, in any location that it appears within the setting value). The
   affected settings are: socket_path, logfile, env_file, working_dir and
   pid_file.
 * The variable substitution in command lines (which remains dependent on the
   'sub-vars' load option, for now) uses the same substitution rules and logic
   as for other settings. In particular, this means that a variable expansion
   can occur as part of a command line argument (previously it always replaced
   whole arguments). 
 * The dinitctl program now uses the value of the DINIT_SOCKET_PATH
   environment variable, if set, as the default control socket path. (If not
   set, behaviour is the same as for previous versions).
 * A "poweroff" symlink for shutdown will be installed alongside other symlinks
   ("reboot", "halt" etc). This allows integration in environments that expect
   such a command to be available.

== Version 0.12.0

This is the third Alpha release, issued as a follow-up to the previous Alpha
releases. It contains a number of minor improvements.

Changes:
 * A new "--ignore-unstarted" option to dinitctl, causing it to return success
   when attempting to restart a service which is not started (including when
   no service description for it exists).
 * Add an "always-chain" service option, so that chaining to another service
   (as specified via the "chain-to" setting) becomes unconditional.
   Feature contributed by Alexander Sherikov.
 * Add support for multiple service directories to be specified (via multiple
   --services-dir options).
   Feature contributed by Alexander Sherikov.
 * Improve control socket creation / stale socket removal. Previously, a
   system instance would unconditionally unlink a pre-existing socket file,
   and non-system instances would fail if a pre-existing socket file existed
   (even if it was not active, i.e. no dinit instance was accepting
   connections on it). Now, if there is an existing socket file, dinit will
   attempt to connect to it, and will refuse to start if this succeeds, or
   unlink it otherwise. Unfortunately this cannot be done atomically, so it
   should not be relied on as a general means to prevent more than one
   instance of dinit from starting.

== Version 0.11.0

This is a second Alpha release, issued as a follow-up to the previous Alpha
release. It contains some minor bugfixes and a number of other improvements
(all detailed below).

Important: the default system socket location has changed. If version 0.11 of
shutdown, halt etc are installed, they may not be able to communicate with the
already-running (v0.10.0 or prior) dinit daemon. In this case, to shut the
system down, use:

    dinitctl -p /dev/dinitctl shutdown

Important: the "no-sigterm" option has been removed. To specify that no
SIGTERM signal should be sent to a process to stop it, specify a different
signal (or "none") via the "term-signal" setting. It is no longer possible to
have both SIGTERM and an additional signal sent, but the settings should be
less confusing.

Changes:
 * dinit and dinitctl now support --version command line argument.
 * Improved diagnostic message if a service description file exists but
   can't be opened.
 * Default system socket location has changed from /dev/dinitctl to
   /run/dinitctl (see note above).
 * Active status is indicated in "dinitctl list" output. Square brackets
   indicate a service is marked active (i.e. it has been explicitly started)
   and curly brackets indicate a service that has started due to being the
   dependent of an active service.
 * The "dinitcheck" utility now performs a number of additional checks.
 * Better feedback is provided for various "dinitctl" commands. The affected
   service name is reported for any status update.
 * Fixed bug processing rlimit settings.
 * Fixed issue with interpreting unwanted command line parameters passed from
   linux kernel as service names.

== Version 0.10.0

This release is a major step towards a version 1.0 release. It should be
considered an Alpha release; core functionality is complete but some
ancillary functionality is still unimplemented. It is believed to be of
good quality but bugs may be present.

 * When not running as system init, dinit will now fail to start if the control
   socket cannot be opened. In particular this should prevent accidentally
   starting multiple instances of dinit (and all services).
 * Services of type bgproc will no longer load if the pid-file setting is not
   supplied. Previously such services could be started, but stopping them would
   leave the process running.
 * Re-worked manual service stop (via command). Previously, manually stopping
   a service would inhibit automatic restart of the service, but not of its
   dependents; this meant that the service might still restart due to a
   dependent. In this version, manually stopping a service inhibits restart
   of the service and all dependents (note that the --force option is required,
   as previously, in order to stop a service which has active dependents).
 * Re-worked soft dependency handling slightly. A dependency now (re-)attaches
   to its dependent if it starts (or starts again) while the dependent is
   started. This leads to overall more consistent behaviour (and is simpler
   to implement properly).
 * Re-worked pinning. A service that is pinned stopped can now prevent dependents
   from starting (the behaviour is the same as if the service failed to start).
 * Support start-timeout setting for process services. Previously this setting
   was ignored for such services. It is mostly useful for services which also
   have readiness notification configured (since otherwise, a process service is
   considered started as soon as it begins execution).
 * If a process-based service fails to restart, restart of dependent services
   will be inhibited. This should prevent repeated attempts to launch a failing
   process caused by a restarting dependent service.
 * Fixed some cases where service target state would not be set correctly. This
   could cause output of "dinitctl list" to incorrectly show that a service would
   restart after stopping, when in fact it would remain stopped.
 * Fixed various corner-case bugs in service management.

== Version 0.9.1

This is a bug-fix release.

 * Fix a service getting stuck in the "stopping" state, if a dependent is
   set to auto-restart ("restart = true").

== Version 0.9.0

This release includes some new functionality and a rework of the chain-load
mechanism.

 * The service specified via the "chain-to" setting will now only be started
   if the initiating service completes successfully, i.e. if it terminates
   normally (with an exit code of 0) and only if it is not manually stopped.
 * New option "--container" (-o) inhibits system management functions (such
   as machine shutdown/restart) that are normally enabled when dinit runs as
   process ID 1. A complementary "--system-mgr" (-m) option enables system
   management (even when not running as PID 1).
 * Fixed pinned-started services stopping when released by a dependent
   service, instead of remaining in the started state, and some other bugs
   related to pinning. Some issues may remain to be fixed in a later release.

== Version 0.8.2

This is a bug-fix release.

* Fixed group not being set correctly when "run-as" or "socket-uid" were used.
* Fixed "dinitctl rm-dep" command
* Fixed bug preventing shutdown when auto-restart services were configured
* Fixed smooth recovery of bgprocess services

== Version 0.8.1

This is a bug-fix release.

* Fixed crash on service load error.
* Fixed an unchecked allocation leading to possible unexpected termination.
* Fixed a slow memory leak (in the bundled Dasynq library).
* Fixed --help option for "dinitcheck" not working.
* Fixed badly formatted error message from process launch failure.
* Fixed issue where log file would not always be flushed on exit.
* Fixed "dinitcheck" crashing if service description could not be found.

== Version 0.8.0

This release includes major usability features.

* New command "dinitcheck" checks service descriptions for errors (without attempting to load
  or start the service). Checks the named service(s) and any dependencies.
* Service descriptions can now be reloaded, using "dinitctl reload <service-name>". This works
  for services which are started, with some restrictions, and for services which are stopped,
  and allows dependencies to be altered.
* dinitctl now defaults to the system process socket location when run as root. This means that
  using '-s' is no longer necessary (it is still supported for backwards compatibility). A new
  '-u' option can be used to communicate with the user daemon, if there is one.

== Version 0.7.0

This release adds a minor feature, and includes a re-work of some base functionality
(which should not affect most use cases).

 * dinitctl "restart" command added. Re-starts an already-running service without affecting
   activation or dependency links.
 * dinitctl "stop" command now requires a `--force` option if dependents of the specified
   service would also need to stop.
 * dinitctl "wake" command now reconnects dependency links from dependents of the specified
   service, and can only be used if at least one such dependent is started.

== Version 0.6.1:

This is a bug-fix release with several minor fixes:

 * Resource limits were not properly being set.
 * Prevent early termination when standard input is closed or set to a device which cannot
   be watched for input.
 * Control protocol fix, possibly not affecting any real usage.

== Version 0.6.0:

This release adds a number of minor features:

 * Better behaviour when boot fails. User can choose an action from reboot, resume boot process,
   start the "recovery" service, or power-off. 
 * New service settings for limiting resources at the process level: "rlimit-nofile",
   "rlimit-core", "rlimit-data", "rlimit-addrspace". Both hard and soft limits can be set.
   See dinit-service(5) for details.
 * New "env-file" setting allows per-setting environment to be specified via a file. The file
   is re-read each time the service process is started. 
 * Added a "--quiet" option to suppress console output from Dinit.
 * Dinit when run as a user daemon no longer logs via syslog. Logging to file can still be
   enabled via the "-l"/"--log-file" option.
 * Added a "--socket-path"/"-p" option to dinitctl, to specify the socket path for communication
   with the dinit daemon.
 
A number of minor bugfixes and other improvements are also implemented. An integration test
framework has been added with a small number of tests, to complement the existing unit tests.

== Version 0.5.2:

This is a bug-fix release for several minor issues which have been found in the preceding
release (0.5.1).

 * Fix logging failure after log buffer becomes full.
 * Fix readiness-fd notification not immediately updating service states.
 * Fix use of old settings in sample configuration for Linux.
 * Re-create control socket file node if it "disappears". Should solve issues if root filesystem
   is mounted read-write on boot.
 * Fix potential issue with service launch failure for services using a fixed notification fd. 

== Version 0.5.1:

This is a bug-fix release for several issues of varying severity which have been found in the
preceding release.

 * Improved logging behaviour when a service runs "on console" for a very short time.
 * Fix for crash due to SIGALRM on OpenBSD.
 * Fixes for compiling with Musl C library.
 * Fix dinitctl "enable" and "disable" commands when path to service directory is absolute.
 * "termsignal" setting renamed "term-signal" and now supports "KILL" signal. "termsignal"
   is still supported for compatibility with existing service descriptions.
 * Other minor fixes.

== Version 0.5.0:

This version adds S6-compatible readiness notification support, and adds support for updating
the "utmp" database when services start/stop (this functionality should be avoided if possible
since the "utmp" database is mostly an historical artifact, and system support is often prone
to issues which allow unprivileged users to prevent updates and deny or delay logins; however,
utilities such as "who" may depend on the database being updated appropriately). 

Other changes:
 * Add "-u" command line option to force running dinit as a user instance.
 * Add a "chain-to" service property to better support recovery services.
 * Add a "shares-console" service option to allow running services "on the console" without having
   them own it exclusively.
 * Add "inittab-id" and "inittab-line" service settings for utmp support.
 * Minor bugfixes.

== Version 0.4.0:

This version focuses on being more "distribution friendly". It adds mechanisms to add and remove
dependencies, either temporarily or persistently, between services without manual editing of
service description files.

Changes:
 * A new service description directive, "waits-for.d", allows specifying a directory for which the
   contents (filenames) are read as dependencies. This provides a convenient way to add and remove
   dependencies to service descriptions without editing the textual service description file. 
 * dinitctl has new commands, "add-dep" and "rm-dep", to add or remove a dependency between
   services. The dependency is not persisted and won't survive a restart. Check the man page for
   details.
 * dinitctl has new commands, "enable" and "disable". These permanently enable/disable
   a service for some target ("boot" by default) by creating/destroying a symbolic link
   in the waits-for.d directory specified in the service description (and create/remove
   waits-for dependency dynamically). Check the man page for details.
 * A code style guide has been added (in the "doc" directory).
 * More tests, minor bugfixes.