Change Log

All notable changes to dmon will be documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog.

[0.5.0] - 2026-10-04

Added

• Add explicit dmon stack repair STACK TASK for live foreground/detached supervisors. Preserve healthy members, reuse the retained launch environment, wait for replacement readiness, and include the replacement in later cleanup. Run-scoped operation IDs support rechecking uncertain client outcomes.

• Add optional ready.require_owned for literal-loopback HTTP/TCP probes. Stack startup and configured waits verify a task or descendant listener and report listener-unverified when ownership cannot be confirmed.

• Retain observed descendant process identities in stack records, allowing cleanup after a parent exit followed by a supervisor crash. Structured task snapshots expose verified live_descendant_pids.

• Add a portable local-service setup and handoff skill under skills/dmon. The skill is installed separately from the CLI.

Fixed

• Anchor new task and stack metadata/log paths before resolution on Windows Python 3.8, so missing parent directories cannot produce relative ownership records that later reject their own location.

• Preserve shell command quoting when launching the log-rotation runner, including quoted executable paths and arguments containing spaces.

• Retry transient Windows metadata read permission errors for a bounded period; persistent errors and invalid ownership records remain failures.

• Preserve and reject runtime records with missing or invalid PID/creation-time identities instead of reporting stale cleanup success or raising a traceback.

• Keep the failing task and startup/readiness cause in detached stack status after rollback, instead of replacing them with a generic supervisor error. Report a missing inherited PATH when environment replacement prevents launch.

• Return concrete task-start errors through the silent Python API.

• Identify the executable when Windows launch errors omit its filename, without including command arguments in the added diagnostic.

• Handle environment-file errors during readiness as startup failures, with cleanup and detailed diagnostics kept out of persisted status.

• Reject copied or moved task/stack metadata with a location diagnostic before it can inspect or control the original run. Preserve the record and processes; accept symlink aliases of the original location and legacy stack paths.

• Preserve metadata and report incomplete cleanup for unverified residual POSIX process-group members, instead of silently reporting success. Refuse to overwrite stale task metadata while those residual processes remain.

• Recheck task identity and cancellation after a successful readiness probe.

• Preserve foreground stack ownership records when cleanup is incomplete.

[0.4.0] - 2026-08-08

Added

• Add dmon stack up for supervised stacks with dependency ordering, readiness probes, attached foreground logs, runtime degradation reporting, optional fail-fast behavior, and automatic cleanup.
• Add HTTP, TCP, and command readiness probes.
• Add detached stack supervision with dmon stack up -d, detailed status and listing, and dmon stack down.
• Add detached stack restart with dmon stack restart.
• Add read-only stack log snapshots and following with dmon stack logs and dmon stack logs -f.
• Make foreground stacks discoverable through dmon stack status and dmon stack list, and safely stoppable from another terminal with dmon stack down.
• Add a silent, structured Python API through from dmon import Dmon for task lifecycle and task/stack inspection.
• Add --format json to finite task and stack status/list commands.
• Add dmon wait and Dmon.wait() for configured task readiness, plus direct HTTP, TCP, and command waits with finite JSON results.
• Add config-relative env_file loading with ordered layering, dotenv expansion, explicit precedence, and support across task, stack, wait, and Python API workflows.

Fixed

• Publish start reservations only after their JSON is complete, so concurrent starts never observe a partially written metadata file.
• Retry transient Windows permission errors while atomically replacing metadata that another process is reading.
• Keep configured environment values and environment-file paths out of process metadata and structured inspection output.

[0.3.1] - 2026-08-07

Added

• All paths in the config file are relative to the config file location, and the command will be executed in the config file directory as well. This allows more flexible usage such as running dmon from anywhere with --config pointing to another directory, or running from a subdirectory, which will search for config file in parent directories.
• Add -c alias of --config option for shorter command line usage.
• Add automated tests on Linux, macOS, and Windows, including Python 3.8 compatibility.
• Add opt-in backup counts for task and runner logs; archives remain unlimited when omitted.

Fixed

• Stop the complete child process tree instead of leaving descendants running when the parent exits quickly.
• Report missing executables without a Python traceback and summarize partial multi-task start failures.
• Reserve and update metadata atomically to prevent concurrent duplicate starts and corrupted partial writes.
• Treat zombie and exited processes as stopped, return a failing status for exited tasks, and clean stale metadata safely.
• Resolve explicit stop and status task metadata relative to the selected config file.
• Allow ad-hoc dmon run outside a directory containing a dmon config file.
• Accept child-command options in dmon run with or without a -- separator.
• Deliver Ctrl-C only once to foreground tasks run with dmon exec.
• Use one consistent, cross-platform timestamp format for task and runner log archives.

[0.3.0] - 2026-01-09

Added

• Multiple task names support for start, restart, stop, and status commands
• --all flag for start, restart, stop, and status commands to operate on all tasks

Changed

• stop and status commands can combine task names, --meta-file, and (newly added) --all flag simultaneously

[0.2.4] - 2025-12-16

Added

• Config log_max_size and rotate_log_max_size now support float values representing size in MB.

[0.2.3] - 2025-10-25

Added

• Add default_task key to config to specify the default task to run when no task name is provided.
• --config now supports specifying a directory to search in, not just a file path.
• Add python-dmon as CLI alias in addition to dmon for better package name consistency.

Fixed

• Fix --config non-existing path

[0.2.2] - 2025-10-09

Fixed

• exec use full path for the executable on windows when shell=False
• One pass searching for both dmon.y(a)ml and pyproject.toml when going up the directory tree. The previous behavior will search for dmon.y(a)ml first, then if not found, start over and search for pyproject.toml.
• Fix "AttributeError: 'DmonMeta' object has no attribute 'name'" when listing processes (should be task instead of name)

[0.2.1] - 2025-10-09

Added

• Support --config option to specify custom config file path
• Add exec subcommand to run task in the foreground (maybe for test or debug purpose)
• CLI now prints version information

Changed

• Rename name key to task (task name) in meta files and rename any other related variables in the codebase.

[0.2.0] - 2025-10-08

Changed

Change distribution name from dmon to python-dmon to pass PyPI name allowance check.

[0.1.0] - 2025-10-07

Added

Initial release of dmon, a lightweight and handy daemon manager for running and managing background processes.