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But launchd can also be a pain in the ass -- just ask anybody who tried to make a sandboxed app with a helper tool. Launchd is poorly documented once you go bey
by jakobegger 10y ago
But launchd can also be a pain in the ass -- just ask anybody who tried to make a sandboxed app with a helper tool. Launchd is poorly documented once you go beyond the basics. Some things that should be simple are almost impossible, eg. trying to find out where a job with a certain label is coming from. Some parts of macOS (eg. ServiceManagement) use hidden, undocumented interfaces to launchd, and if something goes wrong with them there's no way to fix it except create a new user account. And for no reason at all that stuff changes with new releases of macOS.
I understand why some people may prefer a simpler tool.
- lobster_johnson 10y agoSure, Launchd isn't perfect. But this tool is about simple process management. It doesn't need to touch the difficult, undocumented parts.
- yliang 10y agoInteresting. Initially I chose to use helper tool to run sudo commands. After wrapping all those poorly-documented Authorization/ServiceManagement/XPC C APIs into Swift 3, I was like, sh*t, lemme just use askpass. Also, many of those APIs are deprecated in newer version of macOS and it's unclear that when Apple will remove them. That said, I can see the HUGE benefits of using launchd under the hood.