Show HN: Linux CLI tool to provide mutex locks for long running bash ops

https://github.com/bigattichouse/waitlock

32•bigattichouse•5h ago

Been exploring claude and spec-based coding, I think it turned out fairly successful. It's just a simple unix-style tool that gives you a single command to use in bash scripts to simplify mutex or semaphore locking of execution.

Comments

asddfgg55•5h ago

Useful project, I love all things terminal, so I also enjoyed your project.

eddythompson80•3h ago

You enjoyed the project because you love the terminal?

sluongng•4h ago

Why not https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/flock.2.html?

yjftsjthsd-h•4h ago

Nit: Probably https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/flock.1.html (shell command, not the underlying libc function)

anitil•4h ago

This was my first thought and I suppose flock(1) could be used to recreate a lot of this. But it does come with some other quality-of-life improvements like being able to list all currently-used locks, having a lock holdable by N processes etc.

Zacru•4h ago

Because that's a syscall ;) https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/flock.1.html is the command line manual.

I would say one good reason is that

  waitlock myapp &
  JOB_PID=$!
  # ... do exclusive work ...
  kill $JOB_PID

is a lot easier to use and remember than

  (; flock -n 9 || exit 1; # ... commands executed under lock ...; ) 9>/var/lock/mylockfile

yjftsjthsd-h•4h ago

Why

  (; flock -n 9

and not

  ( flock -n 9

?

apopapo•2h ago

It's a "for" loop.

permalac•3h ago

Flock can be used in a single line for example for cronjobs.

Flock -s file && script.

Pretty simple. (I forgot the argument, I think is -s..

ethan_smith•2h ago

flock is indeed built-in: `flock -xn /tmp/mylock.lock -c "echo running locked command"` does mutex locking in bash. Your tool might offer better ergonomics or features beyond flock's capabilities?

forrestthewoods•4h ago

I don’t know the exact threshold at which you should use a real programming language instead of a bash script. But this type of work definitely exceeds it.

anitil•4h ago

While in general I'd agree, this isn't necessarily just for bash scripts. It could just wrap the execution of another program allowing higher-level logic to handle concurrency and the low-level program to do it's one-at-a-time job

teddyh•1h ago

We already have lockfile: <https://manpages.debian.org/stable/procmail/lockfile.1.en.ht...>.

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