v0.16.0: Alpha release #8

[davmac314]

This release contains some new features and bug fixes.

All going well, this will be the last alpha release, and the next release will be marked as beta.

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 " command line argument specifies the file descriptor to write the notification to. Contributed by Daniel Kolesa.
• 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

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This discussion was created from the release v0.16.0: Alpha release #8.