hold

Hold: keep a session up for a background task

The lodge rests a session once nobody has used it for the idle window the owner set (1 hour, 4 hours or 1 day). A rest stops the session's tmux and everything running inside it. The conversation is kept, and the next message wakes the session with its full history.

A rest normally costs you nothing. The exception is a task still running in the background: it dies with the session. A hold tells the lodge not to rest this session yet, because something is running in it.

When to hold

Hold only when a task must keep running while nobody talks to this session:

• a background job you started: a build, a dev server, a file watcher, a training run, a long test suite;
• one command you expect to run longer than the idle window.

Do not hold:

• to stay "available": a resting session wakes on the next message, with its conversation;
• while you are talking anyway: messages to you, typing in your terminal, and your own notify, woltspace session send, woltspace session spawn and push-view all count as use;
• "just in case".

Usage

woltspace session hold 6h "npm run dev on :3000"      # hold for 6 hours
woltspace session hold forever "tunnel for the demo"  # until you release it
woltspace session hold off                            # release the hold
woltspace session hold                                # show this session's hold

• Durations: 90m, 6h, 2d, or forever.
• The reason is required. Name the task that is running. The owner sees every held session with its reason (in the lodge: Sessions, then Held; on Telegram: /holds) and can release it. The lodge log names it too.

Rules

• Release the hold (hold off) as soon as the task ends. A forgotten hold keeps a session, with its memory and processes, up for nothing. A forever hold never ends on its own.
• Prefer a duration to forever, and pick the shortest one that covers the task.
• A hold covers this session only. Run it from inside the session that owns the task: it reads $WOLTSPACE_WOLT_SESSION. Use --session <id> otherwise.
• A hold also ends when the session stops for any other reason (it died, or someone stopped it), because the task it covered died with the session. If you restart the task, take a new hold.
• Holding a session that is not running fails.