Changelog

This document records user- and integrator-relevant Spawn Manager changes. Low-level implementation details and test-only changes are omitted unless they define a compatibility or security boundary.

Changes intended for the next release are collected under Unreleased. When a release is made, that section is renamed to the released version and tag date, and a new empty Unreleased section is added above it.

The 0.1.x history is reconstructed from the Spawn Manager Git history and the successive Gitlinks on Abuild's maintained main line. Its dates record when Abuild adopted each state, not when the retrospective annotated tag was created. Historical branch switches are compared with the previously used Gitlink even when the two Spawn Manager commits are not direct ancestors.

[Unreleased]

The changes below are planned for version 0.2.0.

Added

• Added structured execution with an explicit executable, ordered argument vector, complete replacement environment, absolute working directory, independent standard-output and standard-error destinations, and timeout.
• Added a fixed, versioned and length-bounded binary protocol for shell requests, structured requests and execution results. Invalid versions, message kinds, lengths, values and trailing bytes fail closed.
• Added distinct results for normal exit, signal termination, timeout, child-spawn failure, rejected requests and protocol failures. Spawn failures retain their setup stage, errno and a bounded diagnostic.
• Added process-group supervision with bounded termination and reaping, Linux parent-death signaling, normalized SIGCHLD handling and no_new_privs for every request child.
• Added an optional Pid_Reset callback which runs while a manager lease is still exclusive. Together with Pid_Setup, it supports moving a manager into a worker cgroup for one request and returning it afterwards.
• Added protocol, transport and direct POSIX-core test suites, golden-byte format oracles, lifecycle fault injection and comparative execution benchmarks.

Changed

• Routed the compatible shell API through the same supervised execution core as structured requests. Shell commands continue to run as /bin/bash -o pipefail -c and inherit the manager environment.
• Made the manager executable path explicit and absolute instead of searching PATH or reparsing a command string.
• Isolated each pool's sockets below a private mode-0700 directory while retaining short relative socket addresses for the Unix-socket length limit.
• Made manager leasing, reset and cleanup abort-safe. Setup, transport, reset and ambiguous supervision failures poison the complete pool rather than returning uncertain manager state to another caller.
• Bounded frame completion, manager startup, timeout cleanup and descendant reaping with monotonic deadlines.
• Documented the protocol and lifecycle contracts separately from the project overview.

Fixed

• Preserved the shell API's historical failure mapping while retaining exact result details for structured callers.
• Prevented inherited ignored SIGCHLD, signal masks and signal dispositions from making request leaders unobservable or changing child behavior.
• Closed descriptor, socket, process-group identity and child-reaping gaps found by lifecycle and containment review.
• Kept socket cleanup correct when callers change directory or remove a temporary socket parent before final cleanup.
• Preserved manager ownership when logging, setup, reset or task aborts fail.

Removed

• Removed the intermediate spawn_wrapper executable. The manager now owns both compatible shell execution and structured execve directly.

[0.1.18] - 2026-08-24

Changed

• Accepted caller-provided Ada compiler flags and pinned their propagation through the build.

[0.1.17] - 2026-08-11

Fixed

• Captured absolute cleanup paths during initialization so relative manager sockets remain removable after caller and manager directory changes.

[0.1.16] - 2026-08-11

Changed

• Bounded path diagnostics instead of constructing unbounded error text.

[0.1.15] - 2026-08-11

Fixed

• Hardened socket cleanup so one removal failure does not abandon the remaining manager state.

[0.1.14] - 2026-08-11

Fixed

• Removed Unix socket files correctly when the pool used a relative socket directory.

[0.1.13] - 2026-06-22

Changed

• Updated to Anet 0.4.1 and current GNAT project settings.
• Restored builds and tests on current Debian shells and compilers.

[0.1.12] - 2026-06-19

Fixed

• Removed obsolete Ada clauses and made executable-location tests independent of /bin/bash being the only valid Bash path.

[0.1.11] - 2026-04-14

Added

• Added the manager process-setup callback used by Abuild's cgroup worker placement.

[0.1.10] - 2018-04-19

Added

• Made the command receive buffer configurable and used the selected size for in-memory serialization streams.

[0.1.9] - 2016-05-02

Fixed

• Reset connection-refusal state for each retry so a later successful connection is not reported as failed.

[0.1.8] - 2016-03-01

Fixed

• Retried manager connections that encounter Connection refused during pool initialization.

[0.1.7] - 2015-12-07

Added

• Added a caller-provided pool logging callback and configurable manager socket timeout.
• Added generated version reporting and startup diagnostics.

Changed

• Included manager log contents in initialization and transport-failure diagnostics when debug logging is enabled.

[0.1.6] - 2015-11-27

Changed

• Made the manager's production or debug build type selectable through Make.

[0.1.5] - 2015-10-09

Changed

• Migrated Unix socket handling to the Anet 0.2 API.

[0.1.4] - 2012-08-30

Changed

• Moved the manager and wrapper programs into the tools directory.

Fixed

• Interrupted running managers during pool cleanup and terminated an active child when its manager exits.

[0.1.3] - 2012-04-23

Added

• Added a configurable socket directory to pool initialization.

Fixed

• Rejected empty manager pools, validated socket directories and seeded randomized socket names with the process ID.

[0.1.2] - 2012-03-23

Fixed

• Added the GNAT.Expect input-descriptor workaround required by the Abuild integration at the time.

[0.1.1] - 2012-03-23

Added

• Added command timeouts.

Changed

• Switched request serialization to Anet in-memory streams and child creation to nonblocking spawning.

[0.1.0] - 2012-03-02

Added

• Added the first Spawn Manager state consumed by Abuild: a pool of dedicated managers, Unix-domain-socket request transport and compatible shell command execution outside the caller's multitasking Ada runtime.