lunchctl

Lightweight Rust library for creating and controlling macOS Launch Agents (launchd) via launchctl. It helps you generate plist files in ~/Library/LaunchAgents, start/stop agents, and query their state.

Features

• Create and serialize Launch Agents to plist
• Bootstrap (start) and bootout (stop) agents via launchctl
• Check agent running state
• Read existing agent configs from disk
• Small, focused API

Installation

Add the dependency to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
lunchctl = { git = "https://github.com/mishamyrt/lunchctl" }

Quick start

use lunchctl::{LaunchAgent, LaunchControllable};

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    // Use a unique label for your job (maps to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/<label>.plist)
    let mut agent = LaunchAgent::new("co.example.myapp");

    // A harmless long-running command for demonstration
    agent.program_arguments = vec![
        "/usr/bin/tail".to_string(), "-f".to_string(), "/dev/null".to_string()
    ];
    agent.run_at_load = true;
    agent.keep_alive = true;

    // Write, start, check, then stop and remove
    agent.write()?;
    agent.bootstrap()?;
    println!("Running: {}", agent.is_running()?);
    agent.boot_out()?;
    agent.remove()?;

    Ok(())
}

Read an existing agent

use lunchctl::LaunchAgent;

if LaunchAgent::exists("co.example.myapp") {
    let agent = LaunchAgent::from_file("co.example.myapp")?;
    println!("Args: {:?}", agent.program_arguments);
}

Examples

• Basic end-to-end example: examples/basic.rs

Run with:

cargo run --example basic

Requirements

• macOS with launchctl
• The library writes plist files to ~/Library/LaunchAgents for the current user

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.