What is a Supervisor REALLY doing?

[Lennart Ohman]

Hi!

> 	I have no book and have taken no class. I'm in
> 	southern california and have been fiddling with erlang
> 	for a month. I understand the PURPOSE of a supervisor.
> 	To monitor child(?) process states.
> 
> 
> It is not just to monitor. It is it monitor and restart processes as
> specified.

I like to add that to start with, one of the important things
with the supervisor and the hierarchy of processes you can build
is that you get a deterministic start-up of your system.
Meaning that a supervisor does not begin to start its next-in-line
child (according to the order of the children in the "children
specification") until the previous one is finished with its
"init-phase". (Being finished with the init-phase means that
the init-function of the child has returned. Note that supervisors
start their children in its init-phase).

Best Regards,
Lennart

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-erlang-questions@REDACTED [mailto:owner-erlang-
> questions@REDACTED] On Behalf Of Chandru
> Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 8:11 PM
> To: Jeff Crane
> Cc: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> Subject: Re: What is a Supervisor REALLY doing?
> 
> Hi Jeff,
> 
> 
> On 29/08/06, Jeff Crane <jefcrane@REDACTED> wrote:
> 
> 	I have no book and have taken no class. I'm in
> 	southern california and have been fiddling with erlang
> 	for a month. I understand the PURPOSE of a supervisor.
> 	To monitor child(?) process states.
> 
> 
> It is not just to monitor. It is it monitor and restart processes as
> specified.
> 
> 
> 
> 	This is the only implementation of Supervisor
> 	behaviour I can find (it's near the bottom).
> 
> 	http://www.matt-
> mcdonnell.com/code/code_erl/erl_course/erl_course.html
> 
> 	Is this ms.erl an accurate representation of a
> 	Supervisor implementation?
> 
> 
> Have you seen supervisor.erl in the stdlib application which comes with
> Erlang/OTP?
> 
> 
> 
> 	I can't find any documentation for an erlang
> 	supervisor. The examples I can find on the web:
> 
> 
> http://www.erlang.org/doc/doc-5.5/lib/stdlib-1.14/doc/html/supervisor.html
> 
> 
> 
> 	From an erlang beginner's perspective this is a
> 	completely uncomprehensible mechanism. For example:
> 
> 	http://www.erlang.org/doc/doc-
> 5.4.12/doc/design_principles/sup_princ.html
> 
> 	-module(ch_sup).
> 	-behaviour(supervisor). %% Why can't a I find the
> 	actual implementation of this behaviour, defined line
> 	by line so I understand what's going on?
> 
> 	-export([start_link/0]).
> 	-export([init/1]).
> 
> 	start_link() -> %% Where, when, why would I call this?
> 
> 
> This is called by the  supervisor module.  Basically, if you want a
> process to be supervised, you write a child specification. From the
> documentation, it looks like this:
> 
> 
> child_spec() = {Id,StartFunc,Restart,Shutdown,Type,Modules}
> 
>  Id = term()
>  StartFunc = {M,F,A}
>   M = F = atom()
>   A = [term()]
>  Restart = permanent | transient | temporary
>  Shutdown = brutal_kill | int()>=0 | infinity
>  Type = worker | supervisor
>  Modules = [Module] | dynamic
> 
>   Module = atom()
> 
> 
> 
> 	I can't understand how to add a supervisor without a
> 	solid understanding of how they work. This is one of
> 	many problems I have had trying to learn erlang.
> 
> 
> Have a read through the documentation and I'm sure it'll answer a lot of
> your questions. All OTP behaviours are part of the stdlib application.
> 
> cheers
> Chandru
> 
>