--daemon doesn't make clipster run in background

[aksh1618]

When I run

clipster --daemon

I expect it to run in background, but it instead runs in foreground, leading to system freeze when used in .xinitrc.

The README also doesn't suggest the use of

clipster --daemon &

and

This can be run as a background task on session start.

isn't clear enough IMHO. Regardless, I believe anyone using --daemon would expect the program to daemonize and run in background, not hold the thread.

[mrichar1]

It was a deliberate design decision to not background the clipster daemon. The command-line flag simply refers to the 2 operating modes - daemon and client - of which client is the default.

There are a ton of ways to manage daemons in the background 'properly' these days - sysvinit, systemd, daemonize, start-stop-daemon, service, a variety of DE background tasks and session managers, bash&`etc etc.

Implementing background daemons in clipster would add extra code with no real benefit. Additionally, this would also require the addition of a --foreground flag for those who don't want to daemonise, and this would need to be the default behaviour in order to not break functionality for those already using it with other process management strategies. (So effectively the whole change would be a noop for most people).

There is potentially an argument that can be run as a background task is ambiguous, but given the long list of alternatives above, I didn't want to prescribe (and then have to document and support) any one of them over the other.

Hopefully this explains the current design implementation!

[aksh1618]

Yes, it does :) It's just that daemon option in my mind makes me think run in background, but maybe that's just me.

In any case, maybe add a note/warning that using --daemon doesn't make it run in background, thereby avoiding specifying a way to run in background?