GNU Pies README
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* Introduction

This file contains brief information about configuring, testing
and running Pies. It is *not* intended as a replacement
for the documentation, it is provided as a brief reference only.
The complete documentation for Pies is available in
doc/ subdirectory. To read it without installing the package
run `info -f doc/pies.info'. After the package is installed
the documentation can be accessed running `info Pies'.  Invoking
`info pies' (with lower-case `p') will show you a concise
description of the command line syntax (similar to a man-page style).

* Overview

GNU Pies (pronounced ``p-yes'') stands for the Program Invocation and
Execution Supervisor.  This utility starts and controls execution of
external programs, called ``components''.  Each component is a stand-alone
program, designed to be executed in the foreground.  Upon startup pies
reads the list of components from its configuration file, starts them,
and remains in the background, controlling their execution.  When a
component terminates, pies tries to restarts it.  Its configuration allows
to specify actions other than simple restart, depending on the exit code
of the component.

GNU Pies gives you complete control over the execution environment of
each component.  This includes modifying shell environment, running
components with the given user privileges, etc.  The standard error
and/or output of any component may be redirected either to a disk
file or to syslog.

GNU Pies supports a wide variety of component types.  For example, it can
bind the standard input and output of a component to a network socket,
which makes pies a replacement for the inetd utility. Pies implements
powerful access control lists, which are especially useful with such
inetd-style components.

GNU Pies can also be used to manage MeTA1 (http://meta1.org) components.

To facilitate its use, GNU Pies is able to parse configuration files
in various formats, such as traditional inetd.conf, or meta1.conf.  So
that, e.g. migration from the native mcp utility to pies does not
require any efforts.

Finally, GNU Pies can be used as init process - the first process
started during booting.  In this case, the configuration can be
supplied both in the traditional inittab or in native Pies formats.

The running GNU Pies instance can be queried and reconfigured on the
fly via a TCP socket.

* Building

A usual three-state procedure:

 ./configure
 make
 make install

See INSTALL for a generic options to ./configure. 

* Configuring and Running

Please, see the Pies documentation.

* Bug reporting.		

Send bug reports to <bug-pies@gnu.org.ua>. 


* Copyright information:

Copyright (C) 2009-2025 Sergey Poznyakoff

   Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
   of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
   copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
   thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.

   Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
   of this document, or of portions of it,
   under the above conditions, provided also that they
   carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.


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