Standby: Cross-Platform Time Management Tool

A comprehensive, production-ready Rust CLI tool for time management across all platforms. Standby provides a unified interface for sleep, timeout, wait, and delay operations with full POSIX compliance and GNU coreutils compatibility.

Features

• Universal Time Format Parser: Flexible parsing of time durations

  • Integer seconds: 5
  • Floating-point seconds: 5.5
  • Unit suffixes: 1s, 1m, 1h, 1d
  • Compound formats: 1h30m45s
  • Special values: infinity

• Cross-Platform Support: Works seamlessly on Unix/Linux, macOS, and Windows

  • Native signal handling for Unix/Linux
  • Windows console handler support
  • Platform-specific optimizations

• Three Core Commands:

  1. sleep - Suspend execution for a specified duration
  2. timeout - Run commands with time limits and signal escalation
  3. wait - Wait for processes to complete with optional timeout

Building

cargo build --release

The binary will be at target/release/standby.

Usage

Sleep Command

# Basic usage (5 seconds)
standby sleep 5

# Various time formats
standby sleep 5s           # 5 seconds
standby sleep 0.5s         # 500 milliseconds
standby sleep 1m           # 1 minute
standby sleep 1m30s        # 1 minute 30 seconds
standby sleep 1h           # 1 hour
standby sleep 1d           # 1 day
standby sleep infinity     # Sleep forever

Timeout Command

# Run a command with a 10-second timeout
standby timeout 10 sleep 60

# Using signal options
standby timeout -s TERM 10 sleep 60     # Send SIGTERM on timeout
standby timeout -s KILL 10 sleep 60     # Send SIGKILL on timeout

# Signal escalation: send SIGTERM, then SIGKILL after 2 seconds
standby timeout -k 2s 10 sleep 60

# Preserve exit status of the command
standby timeout --preserve-status 10 sleep 60

# Run in foreground process group (like GNU timeout --foreground)
standby timeout --foreground 10 vim myfile.txt

# Enable verbose debugging (shows timing, PIDs, signal details)
standby timeout -v 10 sleep 60
standby timeout --verbose 10 sleep 60

Advanced Terminal Handling:

Standby's timeout command includes world-class terminal state restoration:

• Automatically restores terminal attributes (echo, canonical mode, etc.)
• Restores cursor visibility after killing TUI applications (vim, less, top)
• No need to run reset or tput cnorm after timeout
• Handles SIGTTIN/SIGTTOU signals for background process terminal access
• Uses safe process_group() API instead of unsafe pre_exec

Signal Support:

Supported signals vary by platform. Use -s TERM, -s KILL, -s INT, -s STOP, -s CONT, -s TSTP, or -s HUP:

Platform Notes:

• Unix/Linux: Full signal support including SIGSTOP/SIGCONT for job control
• Windows: Limited to KILL (via TerminateProcess); use --kill-after 0 for immediate forceful termination
• For graceful termination on all platforms, use the default -s TERM and specify --kill-after timeout

Wait Command

# Wait for a process to complete
standby wait 1234

# Wait for multiple processes
standby wait 1234 5678 9012

# Wait with timeout
standby wait --timeout 30s 1234

Completions Command

# Generate bash completion script
standby completions bash > ~/.bash_completion.d/standby

# Generate zsh completion script
standby completions zsh > ~/.zsh/completions/_standby

# Generate fish completion script
standby completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/standby.fish

# Install bash completions (Ubuntu/Debian)
standby completions bash | sudo tee /etc/bash_completion.d/standby

# View bash completion script
standby completions bash

Completion Features:

• Bash: Full subcommand and signal completion
• Zsh: Option and subcommand completion with descriptions
• Fish: Comprehensive descriptions for all options and signals

Testing

Run all tests (unit + integration):

cargo test

Run only unit tests:

cargo test --lib

Run only integration tests:

cargo test --test integration_tests

Project Structure

src/
├── main.rs              # CLI entry point
├── lib.rs               # Library exports
├── errors.rs            # Error types
├── terminal.rs          # Terminal state management (RAII guard)
├── commands/
│   ├── mod.rs          # Command CLI setup
│   ├── sleep.rs        # Sleep subcommand
│   ├── timeout.rs      # Timeout subcommand
│   └── wait.rs         # Wait subcommand
├── time/
│   ├── mod.rs          # Time module exports
│   ├── parser.rs       # Duration format parser
│   └── duration.rs     # Duration type
└── signals/
    ├── mod.rs          # Signal handler abstraction
    ├── unix.rs         # Unix/Linux signal handling (7 signals)
    └── windows.rs      # Windows signal handling (TerminateProcess)

tests/
└── integration_tests.rs # End-to-end tests

POSIX Compliance

Standby is designed with POSIX compliance as the baseline, with extensions for GNU coreutils compatibility:

• ✅ POSIX sleep with integer seconds
• ✅ GNU extensions: floating-point, unit suffixes
• ✅ Signal handling per POSIX specification
• ✅ Process timeout implementation
• ✅ Cross-platform compatibility

Test Coverage

• 20 unit tests covering:

  • Time format parsing (integer, float, suffixes, compound)
  • Duration calculations
  • Special values (infinity)

• 14 integration tests covering:

  • Sleep with various time formats
  • Timeout with process termination
  • Signal handling
  • CLI help and version
  • Error handling

Exit Codes

• 0: Successful completion
• 1: Timeout occurred or command failed
• Other codes: Exit code from the executed command

Dependencies

• clap - CLI argument parsing with derive macros
• thiserror - Error handling
• nix - Unix syscall bindings (Unix only)
• winapi - Windows API bindings (Windows only)

Note: Minimal dependency footprint with no async runtime or external signal handling libraries for synchronous CLI operations.

Performance

Standby is compiled to native binaries with optimizations enabled, providing near-native performance with minimal overhead.

Features & Timeline

Completed (v0.1.2)

• Support for additional signals (SIGSTOP, SIGCONT, SIGTSTP, SIGHUP)
• Windows TerminateProcess support for SIGKILL
• RAII terminal guard pattern for guaranteed restoration

Completed (v0.2.0)

• Linux timerfd support for nanosecond-precision timeouts (~1μs latency)
• macOS adaptive polling for efficient timeout handling (1-10ms latency)
• Shell completion scripts for bash, zsh, and fish
• Optional verbose mode (-v/--verbose) for timeout troubleshooting
• Debug logging with timing information and signal details

Future Enhancements

• True kqueue integration for macOS (currently uses adaptive polling)
• Real-time timer precision improvements (sub-microsecond)
• Integration with system schedulers (cron, at)
• Resource limits (CPU time, memory usage tracking)

License

MIT or Apache 2.0 (standard Rust project licenses)