=== ,-. ,-.,---.,---. ,--, .-. .-. .--. ,---. ,'|"\
| | |(|| .-'| .-' .' .' | | | | / /\ \ | .-.\ | |\ \
| | ()| -.|-. | | __ | | | |/ /__\ | -'/ | | \ \ | | | || .-'| .-' \ \ ( _)| | | || __ || ( | | \ \ |--. | || | | --.\-) )| -')|| | |)|| |\ \ /(|-' / |( __.'-')\| /( __.')\____/---()|| ()|| )(__)`--' () () () () ()

lifeguard is yet-another-process-launcher, but with a few extra tricks up its sleeve. It was designed to run processes that accompany apps that are deployed via Capistrano, so it supports watching for changes to tmp/restart.txt. It also supports being started up before the process it is configured to run has been deployed, allowing it to be provisioned as a service before the app deployment.

Optionally, lifeguard can connect to Campfire or Slack to mention restarts.

Usage

If you want to use the campfire integration, you need to define these environment variables:

• CAMPFIRE_ACCOUNT
• CAMPFIRE_TOKEN
• CAMPFIRE_ROOM

If you want to use the Slack integration, you need to define these environment variables:

• SLACK_TEAM
• SLACK_TOKEN
• SLACK_CHANNEL

To run lifeguard:

lifeguard --dir /app/dir/current --cmd "bundle exec resque-pool -E production" --title "ResquePool-production"

Arguments:

• --dir: Tells lifeguard what directory to watch for a tmp/restart.txt file. If specified, lifeguard will not run the command until {dir}/tmp/restart.txt exists.

• --cmd: The command lifeguard should run. If --dir was specified, working directory will be changed before starting.

• --title: Lifeguard will use title in Campfire notifications and will set the process title to "lifeguard:{title}"

• --handoff: For Node.js apps, lifeguard can run in a special mode that allows live handoffs between old and new instances, allowing them to transfer state and listening sockets. For more, see the StreamMachine project.

Installing

You can install lifeguard globally via npm:

npm install -g lifeguard

Handoffs

Lifeguard can coordinate with a compatible Node.js application to allow seamless restarts that pass existing connections over to the new process.

More documentation to come.

Who?

lifeguard is written by Eric Richardson erichardson@emcien.com for Emcien.