Bug 82773

Summary:	RFE: Make it easy for applications to save state
Product:	systemd	Reporter:	Bastien Nocera <bugzilla>
Component:	general	Assignee:	systemd-bugs
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:	systemd-bugs
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Bastien Nocera 2014-08-18 14:06:38 UTC

As discussed on IRC, it would be useful for systemd to lend a hand to applications that want to save state in the event that they crash.

1. Application will save state every 5/10 seconds when needed to its run-time directory
2. If the application crashes, systemd would move the application's state file to permanent storage under the data-dir.
3. If the application is closed properly, the state file would be removed

systemd could help by providing an equivalent to ExecStopPost that would move files with an app-specific name.

For example, totem saves a state playlist (including current playback position) to /run/user/1000/org.gnome.Totem/org.gnome.Totem.state.xspf. If totem crashes, then that file is moved to ~/.local/share/org.gnome.Totem/org.gnome.Totem.state.xspf so that it can re-read it when restarted.

Comment 1 Bastien Nocera 2014-08-18 14:13:13 UTC

<desrt> hadess: .local/share isn't going to get you invited to anybody's parties :)

Comment 2 Lennart Poettering 2014-08-18 20:28:28 UTC

Hmm, isn't this something dconf or so should cover instead?

THis would only protect against totem dying, but not against the system entirely dying...

Comment 3 Bastien Nocera 2014-08-21 19:12:04 UTC

(In reply to comment #2)
> Hmm, isn't this something dconf or so should cover instead?

dconf isn't there to store random blobs. systemd is the one that knows whether the application has crashed or quit correctly.

> THis would only protect against totem dying, but not against the system
> entirely dying...

True, but that would require us forcing a sync write to the disk, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid.

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