qme (queue me)

A simple queueing system for long-running commands. It allows you to queue up shell commands from anywhere, and run them in order.

This is useful for enqueueing long-running commands sharing a limited resource, like a video encoding (which maxes out CPU), rsync'ing files (which take up all upload bandwidth), or running a build script (which takes up all CPU).

If the program you're running has no built-in queueing functionality, and you have no pre-determined list of jobs, such that running a shell script isn't an option, this is a simple way to get it done.

Usage

In any terminal simply prefix your command with qme

sleep 5  # executes the command directly
./qme sleep 5  # queues and executes the command

This will enqueue the command and start executing it right away, piping its stdout and stderr to the terminal, but it will also keep an RPC server running in the background.

$ ./qme sleep 5
2022/01/21 10:54:12 enqueueing 'sleep'
2022/01/21 10:54:12 assuming server role
2022/01/21 10:54:12 listening on /tmp/qme.sock
2022/01/21 10:54:12 started executing 'sleep' with pid 62775
2022/01/21 10:28:30 finished: exit status 0
2022/01/21 10:28:30 idling...
2022/01/21 10:28:50 idle timeout reached, shutting down

So when you enqueue another task before the server process shuts down (it timeouts in 20s), it will connect & enqueue the command on the server process, and it will be executed there.

# this will be executed on the server process
$ ./qme sleep 1
2022/01/21 10:54:13 connected. assuming client role
2022/01/21 10:54:13 enqueued 'sleep'

$ ./qme sleep 2
2022/01/21 10:54:14 connected. assuming client role
2022/01/21 10:54:14 enqueued 'sleep'

# server process accepts the command, and starts executing it  
...
2022/01/21 10:30:36 idling...
2022/01/21 10:54:13 enqueueing 'sleep'  # <-- command accepted into the queue
2022/01/21 10:54:14 enqueueing 'sleep'  # <-- 
2022/01/21 10:54:22 finished: exit status 0
2022/01/21 10:54:22 idling...
2022/01/21 10:54:22 started executing 'sleep' with pid 62804 # <-- command is now executing
2022/01/21 10:54:23 finished: exit status 0
2022/01/21 10:54:23 idling...
2022/01/21 10:54:23 started executing 'sleep' with pid 62805
2022/01/21 10:54:25 finished: exit status 0
2022/01/21 10:54:25 idling...
2022/01/21 10:54:45 idle timeout reached, shutting down # <-- server process shuts down if there's nothing to do

If the server already shut down, it will assume the server role and start executing & listening again. So no matter when & where you run qme, it will run the command now or after other queued commands finishes executing, but not at the same time.

TODO

• Add tests
• Respect os signals
• Make idle timeout configurable
• Support separate queues (e.g. one queue for CPU-heavy, another one for network-heavy, etc.)
• Support command weights, so that important commands are executed first