Exploiting GNU screen to be used like sysdaemons

Why?

System daemons (background processes) is only available for root users. But what if you want to run something as a daemon but not as root? You can use screen to do that, but it's designed for interactive use. This tool is designed to make screen more suitable for daemon use, by leveraging a configuration file, it will remember the last screen processes and start all processes it if it's not running.

Installation

Requires GNU screen, install it from package managers.

go install github.com/willnode/screend/...@latest

This software doesn't work on Windows.

Usage

Example usage:

# Setup a work environment where we need to run
# a code-server and a nodejs development server
screend add code-server
screend add --dir ~/myproject npm run start

# Start all processes to start working
screend start
# Stop when you're done
screend stop

See screend help or this file for more information.