To address the width issue, tools could perhaps format PID as base-36, so 9999999 becomes 5yc1r. You can make it even small with base-62, but then it becomes case-sensitive (probably not a good idea). Will probably break some tools though. Then again, so will increasing the PID range probably.
I’ve run in to PID collisions before with e.g. Vim: it thinks “Vim process xxx” is still alive when editing a file which had a swap from a previous instance, but it turned out that PID was used by a different process. Not sure how much this will help without random PIDs though.
Aside: the way systemd releases software is annoying, it’s just casually mentioned a few paragraphs down in the changelog of some random “2xx” release that “oh, this might break some stuff and you may want to consider changing it back” :-/
I am a bit torn on the huge pids. Too often you need to quickly memorize one and I’m already bad with 5 digits. The alternative is often to reach for the mouse to copy it. Also not ideal..
s/Fedora 31/systemd 243/
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/v243/NEWS#L31-L46
Kept original title, but poiint that it probably needs
systemd.Well, yeah. Every distro that uses systemd has “decided” to allow (and have) giant process IDs.
To address the width issue, tools could perhaps format PID as base-36, so
9999999becomes5yc1r. You can make it even small with base-62, but then it becomes case-sensitive (probably not a good idea). Will probably break some tools though. Then again, so will increasing the PID range probably.I’ve run in to PID collisions before with e.g. Vim: it thinks “Vim process xxx” is still alive when editing a file which had a swap from a previous instance, but it turned out that PID was used by a different process. Not sure how much this will help without random PIDs though.
Aside: the way systemd releases software is annoying, it’s just casually mentioned a few paragraphs down in the changelog of some random “2xx” release that “oh, this might break some stuff and you may want to consider changing it back” :-/
Sorta like Multics’ shriek names?
wow, TIL.
I am a bit torn on the huge pids. Too often you need to quickly memorize one and I’m already bad with 5 digits. The alternative is often to reach for the mouse to copy it. Also not ideal..