Re: [Nmh-workers] Locking In Scripts and nmh Locking

[Ken Hornstein]

>The basic philosophy and reason-for-existence of mh and of nmh is that that's
>not the way to go. I should be allowed -- nay encouraged -- to use file system
>tools to manipulate mh constructs.

Okay, let me put in my $0.02:

- I'm kinda with David Levine in that manipulating the MH files directly
  is a sort of "Here be Dragons" kind of thing.
- But I also believe that if you want to hang yourself then you should
  be allowed to buy the rope.

So, given that ... I'm fine with some kind of locking program.  I
see this as a distinct issue from the "cron jobs modify the MH
context" problem; Ralph has already shown a reasonable soution for
that.  My thinking is that you would use this program only for
fiddling with MH files outside of MH programs.  It would NOT be for
running one or more MH commands inside of a lock.  E.g., something
like:

        mhlock pick -seq ...

would deadlock.

So, here's a usage I'm thinking of:

        mhlock [-seq] [-context] [-folder foldername] [-all] [--] command

The -seq, -context, -folder switches would control what it would lock.
-all would lock all things.  mhlock would then run the command specified
on the command line under the lock, then exit.

--Ken