Codex CLI installs a persistent, self-updating background daemon by default

https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/48195

111•whimblepop•54m ago

Comments

dingaling911•38m ago

This stuff is moving fast, should update automatically. This is kind of standard now. Browsers do it. No reason for harnesses not to do it as well.

icantevenhold•35m ago

My browser doesnt update automatically, i have to approve it.

Maybe this kind of stuff is standard for some people but I absolutely loathe auto updating software for many reasons

nicce•22m ago

For example, Firefox updates by default and forces you to restart it, disabling using websites or seeing any site content before doing so.

djsavvy•18m ago

I've been using Firefox for years and don't think I've ever seen this. Are you running some custom configuration?

Zambyte•10m ago

On your setup.

Firefox does not only not prompt me for updates (it only updates if I manually run an update), even if I do update with Firefox running, it does not stop me from continuing to use Firefox without restarting it. All I did was install Firefox from flathub (packaged by Mozilla (a default configuration provided by Mozilla)).

4chandaily•10m ago

Iirc, this is a pattern of the flatpack version of Firefox. I do not believe the .deb does this.

RobotToaster•9m ago

I've never seen that behaviour, it downloads updates in the background and then gives me a little notification that I should restart it to update, but it's dismiss-able.

jstummbillig•16m ago

Being able to turn auto-updates off is okay, but that being the default would certainly not be okay in Codex, giving the reach, what it can do and how immature it is.

dv35z•5m ago

One practical reason - system stability for important events.

I travel for work, and often have a tech demo, solution, tool, or something to show - or am running a workshop.

I usually do NOT update things right before my trip, as I want to minimize the potential for disruption.

johnnyApplePRNG•34m ago

Sure yea just let sam altman install a rootkit on your box.

That's not odd whatsoever. /s

dingaling911•33m ago

you run it on the bare metal?!! Balls. I run it in a container

wren6991•34m ago

If software engineering is solved they should be able to get it right the first time

dingaling911•32m ago

CODEX WRITES ITSELF! DONT YOU PEOPLE UNDERSTAND!!!!!

bayindirh•31m ago

So you imply that Codex has a hoarding issue?

jonplackett•24m ago

It gets very attached to itself

bayindirh•33m ago

You can do this without a daemon, and without storing n previous versions as noted by another user.

swatcoder•25m ago

Products moving fast doesn't mean that they're moving in the direction I want, or that I want them to move underneath me while I'm in the middle of a project.

Auto-update systems have value but are not a suitable default for professional tools.

isityettime•17m ago

Ordinary package managers are totally capable of updating thousands of programs without manual effort, including automatically and in the background if that's a thing you want. But they do it without violating users' sovereignty over their own computers or turning every app into a special snowflake that gets to install software (namely itself) in its own bespoke way.

wtallis•16m ago

Serious tools shouldn't do this. Sure, you can offer an opt-in rapid release beta update option, but if you can't go more than a month without forcing me into a "stable" update that changes the UI and behavior I'm getting used to, then I'm not going to consider your software stable and reliable enough to be worth developing expertise in using.

RobotToaster•11m ago

Then use the package manager, or windows store on windows.

icantevenhold•37m ago

It also fills up my HD with old versions. I investigated and it took up something like 12 gigabytes in total on my system; which seems insane to me, it’s just a harness?

People moan about how badly made Claude code is but Codex seems much worse on every metric

bayindirh•34m ago

Remember: VSCode runs a complete headless Eclipse instance as its Java LSP, so I don't expect quality code from any of the big companies anymore.

dwattttt•17m ago

Are you referring to something built into VS Code, or an extension? It looks you're talking about https://github.com/redhat-developer/vscode-java, which is RedHat's doing.

accrual•16m ago

Yes, my DEV VM tended to fill up with VSCode backups as well. I finally expanded the disk so it's less of an issue today, but for a while ENOSPC was resolved by cleaning up ~/.vscode-server/cli/servers.

Onavo•30m ago

Even if you installed codex with brew?

umvi•29m ago

Can't wait until we get really well designed harnesses written in a compiled language that doesn't bloat my computer. Will probably have to be written by a company other than OpenAI because codex is like the exact opposite of everything I just listed

timdorr•16m ago

This is the same operational model as Claude Code.

  ls ~/.local/share/claude/versions/
  ps auxww | grep "claude bg"

I see a few prior versions of the Claude Code binary and several running background tasks, without any copy of Claude Code in the foreground. I regularly get a "Update available" message in my Claude Code UI too.

reacharavindh•15m ago

I’ve been using GPT models via hax[1], a bare bones harness with minimal tools on my system and have the models rely on bash for the most part the last few months. It’s been a breath of fresh air amidst all these overengineered harnesses.

If I need special actions, I just make them CLI tools on my Mac and tell the AI model that such a tool exists(via a single line in its system prompt) and that’s it. It’s been very nice.

[1] - https://usehax.dev/

No affiliation whatsoever. Just a happy user.

HackerThemAll•15m ago

Yeah, and for the contrary I spotted Claude app being ugly. When I turned off Claude, then put my computer to sleep and later woke it up, it made my fans spin loudly, and after I checked, there were like 2 dozen Claude processes and a lot of Python. What was it doing - I have no idea, but it was crazy. I'm setting up a VM with nothing but Claude and necessary tools. I feel Claude is not honest with everything it is doing.

esjeon•15m ago

I think the quality of Codex CLI (and Claude Code) is an honest reflection of the status quo of LLM-driven development. The future doesn’t look really promising.

sdcfgy•11m ago

Totally.

The problem is hardly anyone gives a shit if they can pump out stuff that makes them look like they are good at stuff.

Vanity before engineering.

whimsicalism•5m ago

I find codex CLI to be a pretty high quality application. Is the existence of a backend daemon what you're referring to ?

thebeardisred•13m ago

It's right about now that having a operating system distro model is great - you get folks who will package the software & test it out, make generally sensible defaults, and generally keep shenanigans like this from going on

Cyph0n•9m ago

Nix takes it a step further and makes you have to go out of the way to enable self-updating behavior when packaging something :)

dv35z•9m ago

What are the top ones you recommend? ( I am running Mint Debian Linux )

quotemstr•5m ago

Refusal to adhere to the XDG specification is a big signal that the app is going to be a general bull in a china shop. It's not that hard to do OS- and distribution-appropriate package management.

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