freebsd / openlaunchd

A launchd(8) port for non-Darwin systems

Open Launchd

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger introduced a new program called launchd. The daemon replaced SystemStarter (MacOS legacy) and older rc.d (BSD legacy) startup processes and job management functionality.

Launchd can be split into two logical pieces, "process 1", i.e. the root launchd which controls system startup and system daemons and "user launchd" which allows invividual users to manage their own processes/jobs.

Why?

The primary goal of this project is to port launchd in its entirety over to FreeBSD, hopefully making it usable by other BSD or Linux systems along the way. That said, the primary motivator for the original porting work in 2005 was to improve boot time. While improved boot time would be of tangible benefit to FreeBSD users, the current motivator of this project is to enable modern process management for user and system level processes on FreeBSD systems.

Getting involved:

• #openlaunchd on the Freenode is where development discussion can occur.
• open launchd mailing list

Helpful links

• The main project home page can be found on the FreeBSD project wiki.
• rwatson@ runs fxr.watson.org which can be very useful for cross-referencing Apple system headers and code, with FreeBSD system headers and code

openlaunchd's Issues

plist parsing code needed

Since launchd relies on CoreFoundation to parse its plist job configuration files, we'll need something to parse the plist files.

CF-lite exists, but is under the Apple Public Source License, so that is not desirable.

See src/core.c and man/launchd.plist.5 for more documentation

liblaunch needs to build before anything else

Before any further porting work on launchd or launchproxy is to continue, liblaunch is going to need to be tested and ported.

cc -O2 -pipe  -Werror -I/usr/home/tyler/source/github/launchd-for-freebsd/launchproxy/../src -I/usr/home/tyler/source/github/launchd-for-freebsd/launchproxy/../liblaunch -std=gnu99 -Qunused-arguments -fstack-protector   -o launchproxy launchproxy.o
launchproxy.o: In function `main':
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x39): undefined reference to `launch_data_alloc'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x4d): undefined reference to `launch_data_set_string'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x77): undefined reference to `launch_msg'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x8b): undefined reference to `launch_data_free'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x98): undefined reference to `launch_data_dict_lookup'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0xba): undefined reference to `launch_data_dict_lookup'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0xc7): undefined reference to `launch_data_get_integer'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0xdb): undefined reference to `launch_data_dict_lookup'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0xe8): undefined reference to `launch_data_get_string'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0xf8): undefined reference to `launch_data_dict_lookup'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x111): undefined reference to `launch_data_dict_lookup'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x11e): undefined reference to `launch_data_get_bool'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x131): undefined reference to `launch_data_dict_lookup'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x145): undefined reference to `launch_data_dict_lookup'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x391): undefined reference to `launch_data_dict_lookup'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x3a2): undefined reference to `launch_data_get_bool'
launchproxy.o: In function `find_fds':
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x4ff): undefined reference to `launch_data_get_type'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x519): undefined reference to `launch_data_get_fd'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x59d): undefined reference to `launch_data_dict_iterate'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x5ac): undefined reference to `launch_data_array_get_count'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x5c7): undefined reference to `launch_data_array_get_index'
launchproxy.c:(.text+0x5de): undefined reference to `launch_data_array_get_count'
cc: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
*** Error code 1

Stop.
make[1]: stopped in /usr/home/tyler/source/github/launchd-for-freebsd/launchproxy
*** Error code 1

Add a COPYING or LICENSE file

I presume this is a Apache v2 project, like upstream, but should include a COPYING file.

Investigate libucl as the default configuration file format

Discussed this with @kmacy on IRC, but we should use this issue to enumerate the pros and cons of depending on libucl for processing job configurations.

Is the project dead?

Hey there! It seems like the project had no activity at all since 2014, anything you guys can say about its status? Can it be used in the state it is right now?

Any plans to revive it?

Thanks!

Get mach support merged into -CURRENT

This is just a placeholder for @kmacy's mach shim support. Once that's merged into -CURRENT we should be able to close this up and start #defineing HAS_MACH on FreeBSD 11 :)

vproc needs documenting

the vproc code inside of liblaunch could use a heavy dose of documentation to make it clearer what's needed on non-Apple OSes

Pull XPC code out of core.c into it's own object file

XPC is pretty intertwined in the core of what launchd is, almost 300 references to XPC symbols in launchd/*.c alone.

In order to avoid ifdef'ing the bejsus out of launchd/core.c, it probably makes a lot o fsense to parcel out the XPC specific code into its own object file.

NOTE: It might make sense to define an abstracted APi on top of XPC, to allow a DBus interface to be implemented for Linux-based systems.

Build system should use more portable makefiles

Makefile portability, HA!

Either way, BSD Make macros probably aren't a great idea for portability.

uuid generation requires external library

Looks like Apple OSes uses a bundled version of e2fsprogs' libuuid to provide <uuid/uuid.h>

cc  -O2 -pipe  -Werror -g -I/usr/home/tyler/source/github/openlaunchd/liblaunch/../src -std=gnu99 -Qunused-arguments -fstack-protector  -c liblaunch.c -o liblaunch.o
In file included from liblaunch.c:23:
./launch_priv.h:28:10: error: 'launch.h' file not found with <angled> include; use "quotes" instead
#include <launch.h>
         ^~~~~~~~~~
         "launch.h"
./launch_priv.h:31:10: fatal error: 'uuid/uuid.h' file not found
#include <uuid/uuid.h>
         ^
2 errors generated.
*** Error code 1

Stop.
make[1]: stopped in /usr/home/tyler/source/github/openlaunchd/liblaunch
*** Error code 1

Stop.
make: stopped in /usr/home/tyler/source/github/openlaunchd

This should either be bundled into the openlaunchd tree, or enumerated as a dependency.

reserved identifier violation

I would like to point out that identifiers like "__LAUNCH_H__" and "__VPROC_INTERNAL_H__" do not fit to the expected naming convention of the C language standard.
Would you like to adjust your selection for unique names?

launchctl.c should be refactored

launchctl/launchctl.c is pretty giant (nearly 5k lines) and supports all the functionality necessary for the launchctl(1) command.

I think this should be refactored in to a couple different files as makes sense