From: Andre Nathan <andre@...>
Date: 2006-04-22T08:03:55+09:00
Subject: [ANN] Ruby/Watchcat 1.0.0

Hello

I'm pleased to announce the release of Ruby/Watchcat 1.0.0.

Ruby/Watchcat is an extension for Ruby for the development of
watchcatd-aware applications.

Watchcatd is a watchdog-like daemon in the sense that it takes actions
in situations where a machine is under heavy load and/or unresponsive.
However, watchcatd isn't as drastic as the usual watchdog systems, which
reboot the machine. Instead, all it does is sending a signal to a 
registered process (which by default is SIGKILL) if the process doesn't
send it a heartbeat before a user-specified timeout.

Ruby/Watchcatd allows you to register ruby applications with watchcatd.

Examples:

  require 'watchcat'

  # Create a new cat.
  cat = Watchcat.new(:timeout => 10, :signal => 'KILL',
                     :info => 'killing from ruby!')
  loop do
    # Here you do something that could exceed the timeout
    sleep 9 + rand(3) 
    cat.heartbeat # we're still alive
  end
  cat.close # clean the cat's litter box

You can also use a block, in which case the cat cleans its own litter box:

  require 'watchcat'

  Watchcat.new do |cat|
    loop do
      do_something_that_can_be_slow
      cat.heartbeat
    end
  end

For more details, please refer to the README file in the distribution and
in the project's homepage at http://oss.digirati.com.br/ruby-watchcat/.

This is my first Ruby C extension, so I would greatly appreciate comments
and suggestions :)

Best regards,
Andre Nathan