* An -*- outline -*- of the GNU dmd service manager.

** What is `dmd'?

The dmd program is a ``Daemon managing Daemons'' (or maybe a
``Daemons-managing Daemon''?), i.e. a service manager, that is written
in Guile, the extension language of the GNU project.  It provides a
replacement for the service-managing capabillities of SysV-init (or
any other init) with a both powerfull and beautiful dependency-based
system with a convenient interface.  It is intended for use on
GNU/Hurd, but it is supposed to work on every POSIX-like system where
Guile is available.  In particular, it has been tested on GNU/Linux.

** Requirements

This program requires Guile (the GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language
for Extension), version 2.x.  It uses GOOPS, but as GOOPS is part of
Guile, a normal Guile installation is sufficient.  It also uses
readline, though it does not really depend on it.

GNU Make is required to build dmd.

** Getting started

Despite the fact that this program is written in an interpreted
language, you can install this program like all programs that use
autoconf, but the recommended way in this case is:

  ./configure --prefix= --datadir=/usr/share
  make
  make install

Actually setting up `dmd' currently requires some work.  You should
read the Texinfo manual for details.

** More information

Detailed instructions on installing dmd are available in the file
`INSTALL'.  A list of user-visible changes between releases can be
found in the file `NEWS'.  Detailed information about changes on the
source code level are listed in `ChangeLog'.  Open issues on which I
would like to receive comments are explained in the file `QUESTIONS'.

A list of people who can be considered maintainers of this software is
available in the file `AUTHORS'.  A list of people who have been
helpful in improving dmd can be found in `THANKS'.

This program can be distributed under the terms of the GNU General
Public License, version 3 or any later version, see the file `COPYING'
for details.  The Texinfo manual can be distributed under the terms of
the GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.3 or any later version,
see the manual for details.

The GNU dmd home page is at:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/dmd/

GNU dmd is developed jointly with the GNU Guix project.  Both are
essential components in putting the pieces together to build the
GNU system.  Join us now!

** Bugs and Limitations

There is no localization done yet.  Code from the user configuration is
allowed to mess up everything.  Runlevels do not work yet.  A few bugs
are already marked in the source code.

Send bug reports to <bug-guix@gnu.org>, with "dmd" and the version
number in the Subject line.
