[PATCH] add exec -a support (preliminary)

[James Bowlin]

On Wed, Feb 01, 2017 at 07:30 AM, Denys Vlasenko said:
> It can be reasonably easily implemented, but I have hard time
> imagining why would you need it in real-world usage.
> 
> Usually when people ask for something I assume they do need it
> (and can imagine some scenarios). In this case, I don't see them.
> 
> Why do you need it?

One case I can think of is starting a long-running process in the
initrd/initramfs on a system that eventually runs systemd.  For
example, running live from an ntfs partition using ntfs-3g.  If
you want the process to survive (so you can unmount everything
cleanly after systemd exits) then the command name needs to start
with "@":

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/RootStorageDaemons/

OTOH, calling the command via a symlink should also work.


Peace, James