dinit/NEWS

== Version 0.13.0

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

This release includes changes contributed by Daniel Kolesa.

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.