GNU PIES – Program Invocation and Execution Supervisor

The name Pies (pronounced “p-yes”) stands for Program
Invocation and Execution Supervisor. This utility starts and controls
execution of external programs, called components. Each component is
a stand-alone program, which is executed in the foreground. Upon
startup, pies reads the list of components from its configuration
file, starts them, and remains in the background, controlling their
execution. If any of the components terminates, the default action
of Pies is to restart it. However, it can also be programmed
to perform a variety of another actions such as, e.g. sending mail
notifications to the system administrator, invoking another external
program, etc.

GNU pies can also be used as init daemon — the first process
started during booting. The configuration can be supplied both as a
traditional /etc/inittab file or as a native GNU pies configuration
file, which gives much more flexibility. The control interface
provides extensive monitoring and management capabilities.