alt.hn

2/15/2026 at 8:53:26 PM

GNU Pies – Program Invocation and Execution Supervisor

 https://www.gnu.org.ua/software/pies/

by smartmic

2/15/2026 at 9:44:20 PM

One release every 4 years. So this is like monit or systemd-supervisord and so on, a process manager. I have to say the thing I most enjoy about it is the fact that it's got the classic GNU trend of "here's an obviously pronounceable spelling; let's say it a different way".

by arjie

2/16/2026 at 8:09:56 AM

It's how you would pronounce it if it were Latin. In which case it would mean "feet". Maybe that's not what inspired the name.

by elric

2/16/2026 at 9:33:02 AM

Also in Polish, which would mean "dog".

by kaszanka

2/16/2026 at 9:27:27 AM

I think the Latin for feet would be "pedes", singular "pes".

by dash2

2/15/2026 at 9:49:50 PM

The only thing missing is a recursive acronym e.g. Pies: Pies Is Experimental Software or something equally cringe like Hurd

by stackghost

2/15/2026 at 10:00:27 PM

Pies is eshewing systemd?

by stevekemp

2/15/2026 at 9:59:16 PM

how about "Active Development" without any progress in 3 decades

by calvinmorrison

2/16/2026 at 12:01:54 AM

I'm reminded of this https://supervisord.org/

Used it inside of containers a few times when I wanted to keep things simple and have a container that ran both a web server and PHP-FPM at the same time and kept them up.

by KronisLV

2/15/2026 at 10:08:41 PM

Are the collection of components run in some kind of namespace? Say I run a Pies for Gitlab (which in itself had lots of components), and I run a Pies for Frpd, do they share the same space or are they isolated from each other? Am I maybe overthinking this? Perhaps its just a program manager.

by Alifatisk

2/15/2026 at 9:24:00 PM

Is this the gnu version of systemd?

edit: I know it's not a monolith like systemd but service/unit files are a core component of systemd

by written-beyond

2/15/2026 at 9:44:46 PM

systemd is not a monolith.

It's a collection of losely coupled components and services of which basically every single one can be disabled or replaced by another implementation.

by eliaspro

2/16/2026 at 1:01:18 AM

No it definitely is a monolith.

It's NOT loosely coupled in any way. Try running any part of the systemd software suite on an openrc system and see how that works out?

I have no idea why people are so insistent on claiming that its not a monolith, when it ticks off every box of what a monolith is.

by chlorion

2/16/2026 at 12:19:07 PM

Most systemd components do rely on some core systemd components like systemd (the service manager) and journald. I would say that a core thesis of systemd is that Linux needs/needed a set of higher-level abstractions, and that systemd-the-service-manager has provided those abstractions. The fact that other parts of systemd-the-project rely on those abstractions does not imply that the project is monolithic.

by jcgl

2/16/2026 at 9:41:24 AM

Explain the existence of "elogind" and "eudev" then?

It might be the case that one can disable some components of systemd, on a systemd system. It is certainly not the case that they are "loosely coupled", or there would be no incentive to maintain forks of core systemd components with the sole and explicit purpose of decoupling from systemd.

by dTal

2/15/2026 at 9:51:40 PM

It's a collection of tightly-coupled components that are functionally a monolith because large distros tend to rely on the various components rather than allowing modularity.

by stackghost

2/15/2026 at 11:52:02 PM

In theory. In practice, systemd is a mess of different components that have subtle dependencies on each other. And while the core of systemd is solid enough, everything around it is not.

by cyberax

2/15/2026 at 9:25:57 PM

GNU Shepherd

by bladeee

2/15/2026 at 9:31:59 PM

"Pies" means "dog" in Polish an Ukrainian (пес).

by throw_a_grenade

2/15/2026 at 9:40:05 PM

So, "Gnu is Not Unix, Dawg"?

by fangorn

2/16/2026 at 4:43:26 AM

“Pies” is Spanish for feet, which was my second reading after seeing the pronunciation. The first was in reference to round baked deserts.

by seemaze

2/15/2026 at 9:40:14 PM

Is that pronounced “peace” or “piss”?

by otterley

2/15/2026 at 9:43:03 PM

More like pi+[y]es, but single syllable and no y.

EDIT: Here are three audio files to hear: https://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/pies#pies_(j%C4%99zyk_polski)

by throw_a_grenade

2/16/2026 at 1:23:16 AM

As an American, I hear “pyes” - a single syllable “yes”, with a preceding “p.”

by jagged-chisel

2/15/2026 at 10:59:56 PM

The area where I've seen the most homegrown implementations of things like these is HFT, with the caveat it's also designed to be distributed, integrated with isolation systems, start/stop dependency graphs...

I once worked for a company which chose to use Kubernetes instead, they regretted it.

by mgaunard

2/16/2026 at 4:40:31 AM

I've been using this init for years and always liked it. It's sad the Init Wars ignored it completely.

by bandrami

2/16/2026 at 1:14:19 PM

Init for what, your desktop or in a product?

by bmacho

2/15/2026 at 9:48:31 PM

If you have to explain the pronunciation of the name of your tool in the first sentence, you've already lost.

by asa400

2/16/2026 at 8:35:07 AM

I was in a group who began pronouncing the dashes in command-line options as "tack" and they said it was military lingo, but I cannot now find any connection to dash, hyphen, "minus", or Morse code "dah".

by RupertSalt

2/16/2026 at 3:18:51 PM

Tack is short for tackline, a length of line used to delimit messages encoded with flags in the days before shipboard radio communications.

Military and civil emergency communications use alternative pronunciations where clarity and brevity are critical.

by dumah

2/16/2026 at 2:46:39 PM

Ooh! I do this! I got it from Darren Kitchen from Hak5! I have no idea where or why he did it though.

by Shank

2/15/2026 at 10:17:15 PM

https://nginx.org/

by myth2018

2/16/2026 at 7:13:20 AM

Funny, I had a job where everyone called it "N-Jinx", so I said that at another job and everyone looked at me like an idiot.

by flomo

2/15/2026 at 11:10:44 PM

Lots of counterexamples to that one.

by db48x

2/15/2026 at 9:49:07 PM

No.

by zekrioca

2/15/2026 at 11:22:27 PM

English, dammit...

by Artoooooor

2/15/2026 at 10:23:01 PM

sudo? gnu? mate? debian? ubuntu? suse?

by hiprob

2/16/2026 at 1:25:42 AM

Oo Boon Too

I was born and raised amongst the rednecks of the southern US and still, someone saying “uh-BUN-too” sounds so silly

by jagged-chisel

2/15/2026 at 11:56:33 PM

Wait, how are you supposed to say mate?

by quasarj

2/16/2026 at 12:11:31 AM

Mah-tay

by PygmySurfer

2/16/2026 at 4:50:32 AM

lol, no thank you

by jbindel

2/15/2026 at 9:39:48 PM

Pies it means "foot" in spanish

by evilmonkey19

2/15/2026 at 9:40:46 PM

Plural - “feet”

by otterley

2/15/2026 at 9:42:37 PM

'a dog' in polish

by baq

2/15/2026 at 11:13:04 PM

Good to hear that some people out there still have some old-school -style sense of humor.

by gary17the

2/15/2026 at 9:45:46 PM

> pronounced "p-yes"

Absolutely not.

Apologies to the Slavs, but there’s already a utility pronounced like that.

by relaxing

2/15/2026 at 11:57:15 PM

> The name Pies (pronounced "p-yes")

oh come on

by notnmeyer

2/15/2026 at 10:06:36 PM

Almost 20 years ago now I worked for a company that sat a group of about 25 of us down to talk about their latest survey named...CRMPIES.

Everyone looked at me like I was insane as I sat there chuckling. Thank you for bringing back that unfortunate memory.

by garciasn

2/15/2026 at 11:52:02 PM

If you don’t think whoever named it that way wasn’t based, you’re almost as naive as your coworkers :P

by hsbauauvhabzb

2/15/2026 at 9:16:27 PM

Everyone needs to have made a web framework. Everyone needs to have made a programming language. Everyone needs to have made a supervisor. Everyone has to have made a container manager. Everyone needs to have made a text editor.

by tete

2/15/2026 at 9:30:23 PM

Absolutely. I recently wrote my first compiler to get it off the bucket list… brainf*ck compiler/interpreter #100010134 or such? :-) Well… it was a fun half hour.

by binaryturtle

2/16/2026 at 1:47:15 AM

Half an hour? Slacker!

by wakawaka28

2/15/2026 at 10:25:16 PM

What's the value of making a supervisor? It seems to be mostly about gluing together some system APIs.

by killerstorm

2/15/2026 at 11:04:14 PM

In some industries it’s critical. Think about aerospace where code is almost always homegrown or done by specialized company, and are specific implementations for specific needs. You don’t have that many COTS due to the criticality etc.

by trklausss

2/16/2026 at 1:45:57 AM

The thing about specific needs is that they are usually narrow. You could throw darts at the dartboard of problems, working on very narrow problems for years and never get a job solving any of them. If a problem calls out to you and you won't stop until you get a job with it, then the effort could be worth it. But sometimes, even if you get THE job, you'll have a slight twist in constraints that makes most of your prep go by the wayside.

by wakawaka28

2/16/2026 at 9:27:17 AM

Solving a variety of problems makes you better at solving problems.

by direwolf20

2/17/2026 at 1:45:54 AM

I agree, but we all have to pick our battles. Do you want to solve real problems, enjoy other things in life, or solve some problem that a guy on the internet said is essential for any "real" programmer?

by wakawaka28

2/16/2026 at 1:41:42 AM

I disagree with all of this. If you have time and interest, or a real need, then go ahead. I've never met a programmer who's made all of these things in my 20 years of programming, and that includes PhDs, professors, and old graybeards about to retire.

by wakawaka28

2/16/2026 at 3:40:37 AM

I think that at least one thing from the least is feasible.

by kalterdev

2/17/2026 at 1:46:36 AM

That makes a lot more sense than saying everything is essential lol.

by wakawaka28