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

[bigattichouse]

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.

[sluongng]

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

[yjftsjthsd-h]

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

[Zacru]

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

[ethan_smith]

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?

[teddyh]

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

[forrestthewoods]

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]

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

[bigattichouse]

Sometimes you have a cron job that takes longer than it should (but inconsistently so), and another cron job that clobbers what that cron job is doing.

[asddfgg55]

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

[eddythompson80]

You enjoyed the project because you love the terminal?