Re: runit - access to run script's exit status for finish?

[Charles Duffy <cduffy@spamcop.net>]

Gerrit Pape wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 15, 2005 at 08:18:06AM -0400, Paul Jarc wrote:
> 
>>Gerrit Pape <pape@smarden.org> wrote:
>>
>>> # sv status -r .
>>> # 
>>>./run didn't terminate yet, since the supervisor started.
>>
>>Since the supervisor started, or since the last time ./run was
>>started?  The latter seems more useful to me.
> 
> Yes, I agree.  It should print nothing if ./run (or ./finish with -f) is
> currently running.

That's not very useful when chaining, though.

If you run "sv status -r -p -s ." in a shell script, you're probably 
going to pipe it into something like "read exitstatus pid state"; 
excluding the exit status entirely if the program is currently running, 
then, means that you'd end up with your values stored in the wrong 
variables -- certainly not a desirable outcome.

At minimum, a placeholder like "-" or "N/A" should be printed if one 
desires to indicate that no exit has occured. (That said, I'm still fond 
of my type:value syntax).