Configuration watcher

• Relevant schema: [syndicate-rs]/syndicate-server/protocols/schemas/internalServices.prs

Assertions requiring a service with name matching ConfigWatcher cause the server to start a configuration watcher service monitoring files in and subdirectories of the given path for changes:

ConfigWatcher = <config-watcher @path string @env ConfigEnv>.
ConfigEnv = { symbol: any ...:... }.

The path may name either a file or directory. Any time the configuration watcher finds a file matching the glob *.pr within the tree rooted at path, it loads the file. Each time a *.pr file is loaded, it is interpreted as a configuration scripting language program, with a copy of env as the “initial environment” for the script.

Whenever a change to a *.pr file is detected, the configuration watcher reloads the file, discarding previous internal state related to the file.

Note that a quirk of the config language requires that there exist an entry in env with key the symbol config and value an entity reference (usually denoting a dataspace entity). However, the config entry need not be the same as the surrounding $config! A useful pattern is to set up a new ConfigWatcher with env containing a config binding pointing to an attenuated reference to the current config dataspace, or even an entirely fresh dataspace created specifically for the task.

Copyright © 2021–2023 Tony Garnock-Jones, CC BY 4.0