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GNU Pies – Program Invocation and Execution Supervisor

99 points by smartmic 2 days ago | 62 comments

arjie 2 days ago

One release every 4 years. So this is like monit or systemd-supervisord and so on, a process manager. I have to say the thing I most enjoy about it is the fact that it's got the classic GNU trend of "here's an obviously pronounceable spelling; let's say it a different way".

elric 16 hours ago

It's how you would pronounce it if it were Latin. In which case it would mean "feet". Maybe that's not what inspired the name.

kaszanka 14 hours ago

Also in Polish, which would mean "dog".

dash2 14 hours ago

I think the Latin for feet would be "pedes", singular "pes".

stackghost 2 days ago

The only thing missing is a recursive acronym e.g. Pies: Pies Is Experimental Software or something equally cringe like Hurd

stevekemp 2 days ago

Pies is eshewing systemd?

calvinmorrison 2 days ago

how about "Active Development" without any progress in 3 decades

KronisLV 24 hours ago

I'm reminded of this https://supervisord.org/

Used it inside of containers a few times when I wanted to keep things simple and have a container that ran both a web server and PHP-FPM at the same time and kept them up.

Alifatisk 2 days ago

Are the collection of components run in some kind of namespace? Say I run a Pies for Gitlab (which in itself had lots of components), and I run a Pies for Frpd, do they share the same space or are they isolated from each other? Am I maybe overthinking this? Perhaps its just a program manager.

bmacho 2 days ago

I think they both run as user. But you can put gitlab in a docker

https://www.gnu.org.ua/software/pies/example.php?what=gitlab

https://www.gnu.org.ua/software/pies/manual/Docker-Entrypoin...

written-beyond 2 days ago

Is this the gnu version of systemd?

edit: I know it's not a monolith like systemd but service/unit files are a core component of systemd

eliaspro 2 days ago

systemd is not a monolith.

It's a collection of losely coupled components and services of which basically every single one can be disabled or replaced by another implementation.

chlorion 23 hours ago

No it definitely is a monolith.

It's NOT loosely coupled in any way. Try running any part of the systemd software suite on an openrc system and see how that works out?

I have no idea why people are so insistent on claiming that its not a monolith, when it ticks off every box of what a monolith is.

jcgl 11 hours ago

Most systemd components do rely on some core systemd components like systemd (the service manager) and journald. I would say that a core thesis of systemd is that Linux needs/needed a set of higher-level abstractions, and that systemd-the-service-manager has provided those abstractions. The fact that other parts of systemd-the-project rely on those abstractions does not imply that the project is monolithic.

dTal 14 hours ago

Explain the existence of "elogind" and "eudev" then?

It might be the case that one can disable some components of systemd, on a systemd system. It is certainly not the case that they are "loosely coupled", or there would be no incentive to maintain forks of core systemd components with the sole and explicit purpose of decoupling from systemd.

stackghost 2 days ago

It's a collection of tightly-coupled components that are functionally a monolith because large distros tend to rely on the various components rather than allowing modularity.

cyberax 24 hours ago

In theory. In practice, systemd is a mess of different components that have subtle dependencies on each other. And while the core of systemd is solid enough, everything around it is not.

bladeee 2 days ago

GNU Shepherd

throw_a_grenade 2 days ago

"Pies" means "dog" in Polish an Ukrainian (пес).

fangorn 2 days ago

So, "Gnu is Not Unix, Dawg"?

seemaze 19 hours ago

“Pies” is Spanish for feet, which was my second reading after seeing the pronunciation. The first was in reference to round baked deserts.

otterley 2 days ago

Is that pronounced “peace” or “piss”?

throw_a_grenade 2 days ago

More like pi+[y]es, but single syllable and no y.

EDIT: Here are three audio files to hear: https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/pies#pies_(j%C4%99zyk_polski)

jagged-chisel 22 hours ago

As an American, I hear “pyes” - a single syllable “yes”, with a preceding “p.”

otterley 2 days ago

When do you use that vs собака (sobaka)?

throw_a_grenade 2 days ago

I don't, I'm Polish. Can't say for sure for Ukrainians, don't know Ukrainian that well, but my reading of https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%B... and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%81#Ukrainian suggests that пес must be male, but собака is either male or female. I might be wrong.

mgaunard 2 days ago

The area where I've seen the most homegrown implementations of things like these is HFT, with the caveat it's also designed to be distributed, integrated with isolation systems, start/stop dependency graphs...

I once worked for a company which chose to use Kubernetes instead, they regretted it.

bandrami 19 hours ago

I've been using this init for years and always liked it. It's sad the Init Wars ignored it completely.

bmacho 10 hours ago

Init for what, your desktop or in a product?

asa400 2 days ago

If you have to explain the pronunciation of the name of your tool in the first sentence, you've already lost.

RupertSalt 15 hours ago

I was in a group who began pronouncing the dashes in command-line options as "tack" and they said it was military lingo, but I cannot now find any connection to dash, hyphen, "minus", or Morse code "dah".

dumah 8 hours ago

Tack is short for tackline, a length of line used to delimit messages encoded with flags in the days before shipboard radio communications.

Military and civil emergency communications use alternative pronunciations where clarity and brevity are critical.

Shank 9 hours ago

Ooh! I do this! I got it from Darren Kitchen from Hak5! I have no idea where or why he did it though.

myth2018 2 days ago

https://nginx.org/

flomo 17 hours ago

Funny, I had a job where everyone called it "N-Jinx", so I said that at another job and everyone looked at me like an idiot.

db48x 2 days ago

Lots of counterexamples to that one.

zekrioca 2 days ago

No.

Artoooooor 24 hours ago

English, dammit...

hiprob 2 days ago

sudo? gnu? mate? debian? ubuntu? suse?

jagged-chisel 22 hours ago

Oo Boon Too

I was born and raised amongst the rednecks of the southern US and still, someone saying “uh-BUN-too” sounds so silly

quasarj 24 hours ago

Wait, how are you supposed to say mate?

PygmySurfer 24 hours ago

Mah-tay

quasarj 23 hours ago

WHAT D:

kwk1 6 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerba_mate

jbindel 19 hours ago

lol, no thank you

evilmonkey19 2 days ago

Pies it means "foot" in spanish

otterley 2 days ago

Plural - “feet”

baq 2 days ago

'a dog' in polish

gary17the 2 days ago

Good to hear that some people out there still have some old-school -style sense of humor.

relaxing 2 days ago

> pronounced "p-yes"

Absolutely not.

Apologies to the Slavs, but there’s already a utility pronounced like that.

notnmeyer 24 hours ago

> The name Pies (pronounced "p-yes")

oh come on

garciasn 2 days ago

Almost 20 years ago now I worked for a company that sat a group of about 25 of us down to talk about their latest survey named...CRMPIES.

Everyone looked at me like I was insane as I sat there chuckling. Thank you for bringing back that unfortunate memory.

hsbauauvhabzb 24 hours ago

If you don’t think whoever named it that way wasn’t based, you’re almost as naive as your coworkers :P

tete 2 days ago

Everyone needs to have made a web framework. Everyone needs to have made a programming language. Everyone needs to have made a supervisor. Everyone has to have made a container manager. Everyone needs to have made a text editor.

binaryturtle 2 days ago

Absolutely. I recently wrote my first compiler to get it off the bucket list… brainf*ck compiler/interpreter #100010134 or such? :-) Well… it was a fun half hour.

wakawaka28 22 hours ago

Half an hour? Slacker!

killerstorm 2 days ago

What's the value of making a supervisor? It seems to be mostly about gluing together some system APIs.

trklausss 2 days ago

In some industries it’s critical. Think about aerospace where code is almost always homegrown or done by specialized company, and are specific implementations for specific needs. You don’t have that many COTS due to the criticality etc.

wakawaka28 22 hours ago

The thing about specific needs is that they are usually narrow. You could throw darts at the dartboard of problems, working on very narrow problems for years and never get a job solving any of them. If a problem calls out to you and you won't stop until you get a job with it, then the effort could be worth it. But sometimes, even if you get THE job, you'll have a slight twist in constraints that makes most of your prep go by the wayside.

direwolf20 14 hours ago

Solving a variety of problems makes you better at solving problems.

wakawaka28 22 hours ago

I disagree with all of this. If you have time and interest, or a real need, then go ahead. I've never met a programmer who's made all of these things in my 20 years of programming, and that includes PhDs, professors, and old graybeards about to retire.

kalterdev 20 hours ago

I think that at least one thing from the least is feasible.