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runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes #508

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@wking wking commented Jun 23, 2016

The current state operation allows callers to poll for the state, but for some workflows polling is inefficient (how frequently do you poll to balance the cost of polling against the timeliness of the response?) and push notifications make more sense.

The runtime's create process is in a unique position to detect these status transitions.

  • As the actor carrying out container creation, it should have a clear idea of when that creation completes (for the created event).

  • It may setup a communication channel with the container process to orchestrate creation, and that channel may be used to report the start event.

  • It knows (or is) the parent of the container process, and POSIX's wait(3), waitpid(3), and waitid(3) only work for child processes. From wait(3):

    Nothing in this volume of POSIX.1-2008 prevents an
    implementation from providing extensions that permit a process
    to get status from a grandchild or any other process, but a
    process that does not use such extensions must be guaranteed to
    see status from only its direct children.

    So the runtime can setup (or be) the parent waiting on the container process, and arrange for the 'stopped' event to be published on container exit.

I've tried to phrase the requirements conservatively to allow for runtimes that have to poll their kernel or some such to notice these changes. I see the following runtime-support cases:

  1. The runtime can easily supply a push-based event operation. In this case, exposing that operation to callers faciliates push-based workflows without much cost.

  2. The runtime cannot supply a push-based event operation, and has to emulate it by polling. In this case, the runtime can pick a polling strategy that makes sense to its maintainers, and callers who aren't satisfied with that strategy can roll their own state poller without a big efficiency hit (in a lesser of two evils way).

    The requirement is currently worded so weakly that a runtime would be compliant with:

    1. Container process dies at noon.
    2. User calls state at 5pm.
    3. Runtime checks kernel, and sees that the container process is dead.
    4. Runtime publishes stopped event with a 5pm (and some microseconds) timestamp.
    5. Runtime returns state to the user with stopped in status.

    which is a pretty low bar.

  3. The runtime could supply a push-based event operation, but it would be a lot of work. These runtimes can use polling (2) as a quick-and-dirty solution until someone has time to implement a push-based solution (1). The improvement is transparent to users, who can use the same event operation throughout and passively reap the benefits of the implementation improvements.

Without an operation like this, higher levels that need to trigger on these transitions without polling need to exercise a lot of control over the system:

  • They must be the parent of (or on Linux, the nearest PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER ancestor of) the create process, and the create process needs to exit after creation completes, if they want to block on the created event.
  • They must proxy all start and delete requests if they want to block on the started or deleted events.
  • On Linux, they must be the nearest ancestor of the create operation to set PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER if they want to block on the stopped event.

By making event a runtime requirement, we allow for efficient cross-platform push-based workflows while avoiding the need for tight orchestrator gate-keeping. Runtimes that have implementation difficulties have an easy out that allows their callers to benefit from future implemenation improvements. And callers that are not satisfied can always fall back to polling state or the proxy/waitid/PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER approaches.

The buffering requirement is very generic, and I expect more details to land in the runtime API specification. Requirements around the buffer-request semantics (e.g. “buffer for 15 seconds” or “buffer the last 5 events” or “buffer the created event”) seemed out of place at the level of detail in this specification.

The goal is to allow for:

$ funC create --event-buffer created ID &
$ funC event --event created ID && hook1 && hook2 && funC start ID
$ fg

To support blocking on the event without racing on “maybe the created event happened before the event operation attached”.

Given the small number of required events, this buffering should not be a large resource concern, and --event-buffer created would only ever require a single event to be buffered per container.

There is still a race on “maybe the container has already been destroyed and a second container has been created with the same ID before the event operation attached”, but that seems much less likely (especially since the caller is free to pick UUIDs).

This builds on #507, so that should be reviewed first.

UPDATE: note that this pub/sub model does not require an additional long-running process. For an example implementation based on shared access to a directory (like runC uses for state) and inotify, see wking/inotify-pubsub.

wking added 5 commits June 3, 2016 13:42
proc(5) describes the following state entries in proc/[pid]/stat [1]
(for modern kernels):

* R Running
* S Sleeping in an interruptible wait
* D Waiting in uninterruptible disk sleep
* Z Zombie
* T Stopped (on a signal)
* t Tracing stop
* X Dead

and ps(1) has a bit more context [2] (for modern kernels):

* D uninterruptible sleep (usually IO)
* R running or runnable (on run queue)
* S interruptible sleep (waiting for an event to complete)
* T stopped by job control signal
* t stopped by debugger during the tracing
* X dead (should never be seen)
* Z defunct ("zombie") process, terminated but not reaped by its
  parent

So I expect "stopped" to mean "process still exists but is paused,
e.g. by SIGSTOP".  And I expect "exited" to mean "process has finished
and is either a zombie or dead".

After this commit, 'git grep -i stop' only turns up poststop-hook
stuff, a reference in principles.md, a "stoppage" in LICENSE, and some
ChangeLog entries.

Also replace "container's process" with "container process" to match
usage in the rest of the repository.  After this commit:

  $ git grep -i "container process" | wc -l
  16
  $ git grep -i "container's process" | wc -l
  1

Also reword status entries to avoid "running", which is less precise
in our spec (e.g. it also includes "sleeping", "waiting", ...).

Also removes a "them" leftover from a partial plural -> singular
reroll of be59415 (Split create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).

[1]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/proc.5.html
[2]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/ps.1.html

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
To distinguish between "we're still setting this container up" and
"we're finished setting up; you can call 'start' if you like".

Also reference the lifecycle steps, because you can't be too explicit

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Because during the 'creating' phase we may not have a container
process yet (e.g. if we're still reading the configuration or setting
up cgroups), and in the 'stopped' phase the PID is no longer
meaningful.

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
The current 'state' operation allows callers to poll for the state,
but for some workflows polling is inefficient (how frequently do you
poll to balance the cost of polling against the timeliness of the
response?) and push notifications make more sense.

The runtime's 'create' process is in a unique position to detect these
status transitions.

* As the actor carrying out container creation, it should have a clear
  idea of when that creation completes (for the 'created' event).

* It may setup a communication channel with the container process to
  orchestrate creation, and that channel may be used to report the
  start event.

* It knows (or is) the parent of the container process, and POSIX's
  wait(3), waitpid(3), and waitid(3) only work for child processes
  [1,2].  From [1]:

    Nothing in this volume of POSIX.1-2008 prevents an implementation
    from providing extensions that permit a process to get status from
    a grandchild or any other process, but a process that does not use
    such extensions must be guaranteed to see status from only its
    direct children.

  So the runtime can setup (or be) the parent waiting on the container
  process, and arrange for the 'stopped' event to be published on
  container exit.

I've tried to phrase the requirements conservatively to allow for
runtimes that have to poll their kernel or some such to notice these
changes.  I see the following runtime-support cases:

a. The runtime can easily supply a push-based event operation.  In
   this case, exposing that operation to callers faciliates push-based
   workflows without much cost.

b. The runtime cannot supply a push-based event operation, and has to
   emulate it by polling.  In this case, the runtime can pick a
   polling strategy that makes sense to its maintainers, and callers
   who aren't satisfied with that strategy can roll their own state
   poller without a big efficiency hit (in a lesser of two evils way).

   The requirement is currently worded so weakly that a runtime would
   be compliant with:

   1. Container process dies at noon.
   2. User calls 'state' at 5pm.
   3. Runtime checks kernel, and sees that the container process is
      dead.
   4. Runtime publishes 'stopped' event with a 5pm (and some
      microseconds) timestamp.
   5. Runtime returns state to the user with 'stopped' in 'status'.

   which is a pretty low bar.

c. The runtime could supply a push-based event operation, but it would
   be a lot of work.  These runtimes can use polling (b) as a
   quick-and-dirty solution until someone has time to implement a
   push-based solution (a).  The improvement is transparent to users,
   who can use the same event operation throughout and passively reap
   the benefits of the implementation improvements.

Without an operation like this, higher levels that need to trigger on
these transitions without polling need to exercise a lot of control
over the system:

* They must be the parent of (or on Linux, the nearest
  PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER ancestor of [3]) the create process, and the
  create process needs to exit after creation completes, if they want
  to block on the 'created' event.
* They must proxy all 'start' and 'delete' requests if they want to
  block on the 'started' or 'deleted' events.
* On Linux, they must be the nearest ancestor of the create operation
  to set PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER if they want to block on the 'stopped'
  event.

By making 'event' a runtime requirement, we allow for efficient
cross-platform push-based workflows while avoiding the need for tight
orchestrator gate-keeping.  Runtimes that have implementation
difficulties have an easy out that allows their callers to benefit
from future implemenation improvements.  And callers that are not
satisfied can always fall back to polling state or the
proxy/waitid/PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER approaches.

[1]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/wait.html
[2]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/waitid.html
[3]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/prctl.2.html

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
This is all very generic, and I expect more details to land in the
runtime API specification.  Requirements around the buffer-request
semantics (e.g. "buffer for 15 seconds" or "buffer the last 5 events"
or "buffer the 'created' event") seemed out of place at the level of
detail in this specification.

The goal is to allow for:

  $ funC create --event-buffer created ID &
  $ funC event --event created ID && hook1 && hook2 && funC start ID
  $ fg

To support blocking on the event without racing on "maybe the
'created' event happened before the 'event' operation attached".

Given the small number of required events, this buffering should not
be a large resource concern, and '--event-buffer created' would only
ever require a single event to be buffered per container.

There is still a race on "maybe the container has already been
destroyed and a second container has been created with the same ID
before the 'event' operation attached", but that seems much less
likely (especially since the caller is free to pick UUIDs).

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
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wking commented Jun 23, 2016

Some discussion with @mikebrow around this starting here.

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cyphar commented Jul 12, 2016

I don't like this. For runC, it would mean that we'd have to make a long-running daemon to implement this functionality. IMO that defeats the whole point of runC -- it's a single binary you can use without needing any setup. If we make it so that runC doesn't exit after starting a container, then I'm still iffy about it.

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wking commented Jul 12, 2016

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 07:12:09PM -0700, Aleksa Sarai wrote:

For runC, it would mean that we'd have to make a long-running daemon
to implement this functionality.

Why is that? In ccon, where I'm happy with “the start-socket exists”
as the “created” event, I'll implement this operation with a second
long-running process. So:

event-handling-process
-- ccon host process -- ccon container process

where each parent outlives its child. But runtimes that value process
efficiency but still want a server side for their ‘event’ clients
could do:

event-handling host process
`-- container process

If you don't want extra server-side stuff for runC, you could put
events in a subdirectory of your state directory and have ‘event’
clients use inotify to track additions to that directory.

And if you want to invest the minimum dev time, you can always fall
back to polling ‘state’ calls (approach 3 in my runtime-support cases
1).

If we make it so that runC doesn't exit after starting a container,
then I'm still iffy about it.

I agree that a system without this ‘event’ operation is lighter
weight. But I think supporting ‘event’ is a lesser evil than the
“Without an operation like this…” conditions I list in 1. Do you
have alternative, portable solutions to those problems?

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mikebrow commented Jul 12, 2016

I'm good with the idea of an event model.. but agree we should keep tools like runc lower in the stack. For example, runC is not an orchestrator its a low level component. Thus I think the idea has been to keep this runtime spec at said lower level.

Just thinking out loud.. can't we map the event notifications to Mrunal's hooks and store event subscriptions as annotations?

IOW maybe the spec discussion should avoid describing how the implementation of the event model should be provided.

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wking commented Jul 12, 2016

On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 07:05:15AM -0700, Mike Brown wrote:

… can't we map the event notifications to Mrunal's hooks and store
event registrations as annotations?

Can you unpack “event registrations”? Do you just mean “the event
JSON”, e.g.:

"annotations": {
"opencontainers.org/events": "[{"type": "created", "id": "oci-container1", "timestamp": "2016-07-12T09:33:10-0700"}, …]"
}

I like the state subdir approach better 1, since you don't have to
worry about parallel writes to a single state file, but runtimes
should be free to implement the operation however they like.

IOW maybe the spec should avoid describing how the implementation of
the event model should be provided.

I'm not sure where you're going with “should be provided”. I think
the implementation should be up to the runtime, and this PR doesn't go
into detail about the exposed API (since none of the operations in
runtime.md do).

But if this PR lands, I think the API spec (#511 / #513) should
specify a required command-line API along the lines of the funC
example in 2. Otherwise the compliance test suite and other generic
runtime-callers won't know how to invoke the operation.

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/s/event registrations/event subscriptions/

@crosbymichael
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+1 to what @cyphar said on why we shouldn't do this

wking added a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Jul 15, 2016
Catch up with be59415 (Split create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).

I'm not a big fan of this early-exit 'create', which requires
platform-specific magic to collect the container process's exit code.

I have a proposal for an 'event' operation [1] which would provide a
convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we don't need the
'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and could have a
long-running 'create' that collects the container process exit code
using the portable waitid() family.  But the consensus after this
week's meeting was to table that while we land docs for the runC API
[2].

The "SHOULD exit as quickly as possible after ..." wording is going to
be hard to enforce (which is why it's not MUST), but with the runC
model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger post-create and
post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs around after
completing its action, the laggier those triggers will be.

The 'create' ID argument is required (while the old 'start' ID
argument was optional) because the runC approach requires an explicit
'delete' call to cleanup the container.  With a long-running 'create'
that could automatically cleanup, you could have an optional ID to
support users that don't care what ID is used (because they know they
won't be calling 'state', 'start', etc.).

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

The ptrace idea is from Mrunal [3].

[1]: opencontainers#508
[2]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[3]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
@wking
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wking commented Jul 16, 2016

On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 01:02:21PM -0700, Michael Crosby wrote:

+1 to what @cyphar said on why we shouldn't do this

Responding to @cyphar, I pushed back on this requiring a long-running
daemon, waving my hands in a number of directions and mentioning
inotify briefly 1 ;). To make that daemonless inotify reference a
bit more concrete, I've mocked it up in shell 2. Following
@mikebrow's advice 3, I've added an UPDATE to my topic post to link
to that project too.

Does that address your concerns about long-running processes? If not,
can you be specific about why?

wking added a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Jul 20, 2016
Catch up with be59415 (Split create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).

I'm not a big fan of this early-exit 'create', which requires
platform-specific magic to collect the container process's exit code.

I have a proposal for an 'event' operation [1] which would provide a
convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we don't need the
'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and could have a
long-running 'create' that collects the container process exit code
using the portable waitid() family.  But the consensus after this
week's meeting was to table that while we land docs for the runC API
[2].

The "SHOULD exit as quickly as possible after ..." wording is going to
be hard to enforce (which is why it's not MUST), but with the runC
model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger post-create and
post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs around after
completing its action, the laggier those triggers will be.

The 'create' ID argument is required (while the old 'start' ID
argument was optional) because the runC approach requires an explicit
'delete' call to cleanup the container.  With a long-running 'create'
that could automatically cleanup, you could have an optional ID to
support users that don't care what ID is used (because they know they
won't be calling 'state', 'start', etc.).

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

The ptrace idea is from Mrunal [3].

[1]: opencontainers#508
[2]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[3]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
wking added a commit to wking/ccon that referenced this pull request Jul 22, 2016
Along the lines of the create/start split we've been discussing for
the OCI [1,2].  Pull some common functionality into a libccon,
although I don't intend to make that a more than an internal helper.

Post-error cleanup in ccon-cli is pretty slim, since the process is
just about to die anyway.  I'll probably go back through and add
proper cleanup later.

serve_socket gets too deeply nested for my taste, but it's not quite
to the point where I'd pull out the request handling into a
handle_start_request helper or some such.  Mostly because I'd have to
either setup a new buf/iov/msg in the helper's stack or pass that all
through from serve_socket ;).

A few notes on the tests:

I don't have a stand-alone 'wait' on my system (it's built into most
shells [3]), but I've added an explicit check for it because POSIX
doesn't require it to be built in.

The waiting in the create/start tests is a bit awkward, but here's the
reasoning for the various steps:

* Put the socket in a 'sock' subdirectory so we don't have to mess
  with inotifywait's --exclude (when what we really want is an
  --include).  In most cases, the socket would be the first thing
  created in the test directory, but the process.host test will create
  a pivot-root.* before creating the socket.

* Clear a 'wait' file before launching the inotifywait/start subshell
  and append to it from that subshell so grep has something to look at
  (even if it racily starts looking before the subshell processes the
  inotifywait line).

* Block on a busy-wait grep until inotifywait sets up its watcher.
  This ensures we don't call ccon and create the socket before the
  watcher is looking.

  The zero-second sleep while we wait for inotifywait to setup its
  watcher is busy, but POSIX doesn't require 'sleep' to support
  non-integer times [4].

All of these issues could be abstracted out into an 'event' command
[5], but they're fine for a proof-of-concept create/start split.

[1]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/d/msg/dev/qWHoKs8Fsrk/k55FQrBzBgAJ
     Subject: Re: Splitting Start into create() and run()
     Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 15:04:14 -0700
     Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[2]: opencontainers/runtime-spec#384
     Subject: Split create and start
[3]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap01.html#tag_17_06
[4]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/sleep.html
[5]: opencontainers/runtime-spec#508
     Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to
       pushes
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wking commented Jul 23, 2016

On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 04:03:17PM -0700, W. Trevor King wrote:

To make that daemonless inotify reference a bit more concrete, I've
mocked it up in shell [2].

[2]: https://github.com/wking/inotify-pubsub

And to make the OCI integration more concrete too, I have a ccon
branch where ccon-oci implements an event command along these lines
1. You can do (with process.terminal true):

$ echo 'echo hi; exit' | ccon-oci create --id container-1 >output &
$ ccon-oci event -He created container-1 && ccon-oci start container-1
{"type": "created", "timestamp": "2016-07-23T04:16:24.503950Z", "id": "container-1"}
$ cat /tmp/output
hi

If you use a second terminal for the event/start call, you can skip
the standard stream redirection:

term1 $ ccon-oci create --id container-1
…blocks after creation…

term2 $ ccon-oci event -He created container-1 && ccon-oci start container-1
{"timestamp": "2016-07-23T04:21:20.675097Z", "id": "container-1", "type": "created"}

…create unblocks on term1…
/root # echo hi
hi
/root # exit 17
term1 $ echo $?
17

That seems pretty clean to me, and doesn't require much implementation
magic to distribute events or collect the container-process's exit
code.

wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Jul 25, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also drops the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.
It's unclear how these apply to runtimes APIs that are not based on
the command line / execve, and the functionality is covered by the
more tightly scoped LISTEN_FDS wording in the command-line docs.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Partially-Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Jul 27, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also drops the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.
It's unclear how these apply to runtimes APIs that are not based on
the command line / execve, and the functionality is covered by the
more tightly scoped LISTEN_FDS wording in the command-line docs.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Jul 27, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also drops the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.
It's unclear how these apply to runtimes APIs that are not based on
the command line / execve, and the functionality is covered by the
more tightly scoped LISTEN_FDS wording in the command-line docs.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Jul 28, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also drops the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.
It's unclear how these apply to runtimes APIs that are not based on
the command line / execve, and the functionality is covered by the
more tightly scoped LISTEN_FDS wording in the command-line docs.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
@wking
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wking commented Aug 3, 2016 via email

wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Sep 8, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also drops the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.
It's unclear how these apply to runtimes APIs that are not based on
the command line / execve, and the functionality is covered by the
more tightly scoped LISTEN_FDS wording in the command-line docs.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Oct 13, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  recieved and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also drops the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.
It's unclear how these apply to runtimes APIs that are not based on
the command line / execve, and the functionality is covered by the
more tightly scoped LISTEN_FDS wording in the command-line docs.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Oct 13, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also drops the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.
It's unclear how these apply to runtimes APIs that are not based on
the command line / execve, and the functionality is covered by the
more tightly scoped LISTEN_FDS wording in the command-line docs.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Oct 13, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also drops the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.
It's unclear how these apply to runtimes APIs that are not based on
the command line / execve, and the functionality is covered by the
more tightly scoped LISTEN_FDS wording in the command-line docs.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Oct 13, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also drops the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.
It's unclear how these apply to runtimes APIs that are not based on
the command line / execve, and the functionality is covered by the
more tightly scoped LISTEN_FDS wording in the command-line docs.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Oct 25, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

Aleksa Sarai also raised concerns over the safety of potentially
giving the container process access to terminal ioctl escapes
[stdio-ioctl] and feels like the stdio file-descriptor pass-through is
surprising [stdio-surprise].

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also moves the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.md
into runtime.md and the command-line docs.  Both affect runtime
authors, but:

* The runtime.md entry is more useful for bundle authors than the old
  wording, because it gives them confidence that the runtime caller
  will have the power to set these up as they see fit (within POSIX's
  limits).  It is also API-agnostic, so bundle authors know they won't
  have to worry about which API will be used to launch the container
  before deciding whether it is safe to rely on runtime-caller
  file-descriptor control.

* The command line entry is more useful for runtime-callers than the
  old wording, because it tells you how to setup the file descriptors
  instead of just telling you that they MAY be setup.

I moved the bundle-author language from runtime-linux.md to runtime.md
because it's relying on POSIX primitives that aren't Linux-specific.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having 'create' take a '--console-socket PATH' option (required when
  process.terminal is true) with a path to a SOCK_SEQPACKET Unix
  socket for use with the console-socket protocol.  The current
  'LISTEN_FDS + 3' approach was proposed by Michael Crosby
  [console-socket-fd], but Trevor doesn't have a clear idea of the
  motivation for the change and would have preferred '--console-socket
  FD'.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[console-socket-fd]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-10-19-21.00.log.html#l-30
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[stdio-ioctl]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[stdio-surprise]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Oct 25, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

Aleksa Sarai also raised concerns over the safety of potentially
giving the container process access to terminal ioctl escapes
[stdio-ioctl] and feels like the stdio file-descriptor pass-through is
surprising [stdio-surprise].

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also moves the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.md
into runtime.md and the command-line docs.  Both affect runtime
authors, but:

* The runtime.md entry is more useful for bundle authors than the old
  wording, because it gives them confidence that the runtime caller
  will have the power to set these up as they see fit (within POSIX's
  limits).  It is also API-agnostic, so bundle authors know they won't
  have to worry about which API will be used to launch the container
  before deciding whether it is safe to rely on runtime-caller
  file-descriptor control.

* The command line entry is more useful for runtime-callers than the
  old wording, because it tells you how to setup the file descriptors
  instead of just telling you that they MAY be setup.

I moved the bundle-author language from runtime-linux.md to runtime.md
because it's relying on POSIX primitives that aren't Linux-specific.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having 'create' take a '--console-socket PATH' option (required when
  process.terminal is true) with a path to a SOCK_SEQPACKET Unix
  socket for use with the console-socket protocol.  The current
  'LISTEN_FDS + 3' approach was proposed by Michael Crosby
  [console-socket-fd], but Trevor doesn't have a clear idea of the
  motivation for the change and would have preferred '--console-socket
  FD'.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[console-socket-fd]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-10-19-21.00.log.html#l-30
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[stdio-ioctl]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[stdio-surprise]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Oct 25, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

Aleksa Sarai also raised concerns over the safety of potentially
giving the container process access to terminal ioctl escapes
[stdio-ioctl] and feels like the stdio file-descriptor pass-through is
surprising [stdio-surprise].

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also moves the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.md
into runtime.md and the command-line docs.  Both affect runtime
authors, but:

* The runtime.md entry is more useful for bundle authors than the old
  wording, because it gives them confidence that the runtime caller
  will have the power to set these up as they see fit (within POSIX's
  limits).  It is also API-agnostic, so bundle authors know they won't
  have to worry about which API will be used to launch the container
  before deciding whether it is safe to rely on runtime-caller
  file-descriptor control.

* The command line entry is more useful for runtime-callers than the
  old wording, because it tells you how to setup the file descriptors
  instead of just telling you that they MAY be setup.

I moved the bundle-author language from runtime-linux.md to runtime.md
because it's relying on POSIX primitives that aren't Linux-specific.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having 'create' take a '--console-socket PATH' option (required when
  process.terminal is true) with a path to a SOCK_SEQPACKET Unix
  socket for use with the console-socket protocol.  The current
  'LISTEN_FDS + 3' approach was proposed by Michael Crosby
  [console-socket-fd], but Trevor doesn't have a clear idea of the
  motivation for the change and would have preferred '--console-socket
  FD'.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[console-socket-fd]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-10-19-21.00.log.html#l-30
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[stdio-ioctl]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[stdio-surprise]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Oct 26, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

Aleksa Sarai also raised concerns over the safety of potentially
giving the container process access to terminal ioctl escapes
[stdio-ioctl] and feels like the stdio file-descriptor pass-through is
surprising [stdio-surprise].

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also moves the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.md
into runtime.md and the command-line docs.  Both affect runtime
authors, but:

* The runtime.md entry is more useful for bundle authors than the old
  wording, because it gives them confidence that the runtime caller
  will have the power to set these up as they see fit (within POSIX's
  limits).  It is also API-agnostic, so bundle authors know they won't
  have to worry about which API will be used to launch the container
  before deciding whether it is safe to rely on runtime-caller
  file-descriptor control.

* The command line entry is more useful for runtime-callers than the
  old wording, because it tells you how to setup the file descriptors
  instead of just telling you that they MAY be setup.

I moved the bundle-author language from runtime-linux.md to runtime.md
because it's relying on POSIX primitives that aren't Linux-specific.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having 'create' take a '--console-socket PATH' option (required when
  process.terminal is true) with a path to a SOCK_SEQPACKET Unix
  socket for use with the console-socket protocol.  The current
  'LISTEN_FDS + 3' approach was proposed by Michael Crosby
  [console-socket-fd], but Trevor doesn't have a clear idea of the
  motivation for the change and would have preferred '--console-socket
  FD'.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[console-socket-fd]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-10-19-21.00.log.html#l-30
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[stdio-ioctl]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[stdio-surprise]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Oct 26, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

Aleksa Sarai also raised concerns over the safety of potentially
giving the container process access to terminal ioctl escapes
[stdio-ioctl] and feels like the stdio file-descriptor pass-through is
surprising [stdio-surprise].

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also moves the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.md
into runtime.md and the command-line docs.  Both affect runtime
authors, but:

* The runtime.md entry is more useful for bundle authors than the old
  wording, because it gives them confidence that the runtime caller
  will have the power to set these up as they see fit (within POSIX's
  limits).  It is also API-agnostic, so bundle authors know they won't
  have to worry about which API will be used to launch the container
  before deciding whether it is safe to rely on runtime-caller
  file-descriptor control.

* The command line entry is more useful for runtime-callers than the
  old wording, because it tells you how to setup the file descriptors
  instead of just telling you that they MAY be setup.

I moved the bundle-author language from runtime-linux.md to runtime.md
because it's relying on POSIX primitives that aren't Linux-specific.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having 'create' take a '--console-socket PATH' option (required when
  process.terminal is true) with a path to a SOCK_SEQPACKET Unix
  socket for use with the console-socket protocol.  The current
  'LISTEN_FDS + 3' approach was proposed by Michael Crosby
  [console-socket-fd], but Trevor doesn't have a clear idea of the
  motivation for the change and would have preferred '--console-socket
  FD'.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[console-socket-fd]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-10-19-21.00.log.html#l-30
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[stdio-ioctl]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[stdio-surprise]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Oct 26, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

Aleksa Sarai also raised concerns over the safety of potentially
giving the container process access to terminal ioctl escapes
[stdio-ioctl] and feels like the stdio file-descriptor pass-through is
surprising [stdio-surprise].

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also moves the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.md
into runtime.md and the command-line docs.  Both affect runtime
authors, but:

* The runtime.md entry is more useful for bundle authors than the old
  wording, because it gives them confidence that the runtime caller
  will have the power to set these up as they see fit (within POSIX's
  limits).  It is also API-agnostic, so bundle authors know they won't
  have to worry about which API will be used to launch the container
  before deciding whether it is safe to rely on runtime-caller
  file-descriptor control.

* The command line entry is more useful for runtime-callers than the
  old wording, because it tells you how to setup the file descriptors
  instead of just telling you that they MAY be setup.

I moved the bundle-author language from runtime-linux.md to runtime.md
because it's relying on POSIX primitives that aren't Linux-specific.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having 'create' take a '--console-socket PATH' option (required when
  process.terminal is true) with a path to a SOCK_SEQPACKET Unix
  socket for use with the console-socket protocol.  The current
  'LISTEN_FDS + 3' approach was proposed by Michael Crosby
  [console-socket-fd], but Trevor doesn't have a clear idea of the
  motivation for the change and would have preferred '--console-socket
  FD'.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[console-socket-fd]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-10-19-21.00.log.html#l-30
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[stdio-ioctl]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[stdio-surprise]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Nov 1, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Versioning

The command-line interface is largely orthogonal to the config format,
and config authors and runtime callers may be entirely different sets
of people.  Zhang Wei called for more explicit versioning for the CLI
[interface-versioning], and the approach taken here follows the
approach taken by Python's email package [python-email-version].

Wedging multiple, independently versioned entities into a single
repository can be awkward, but earlier proposals to put the CLI in its
own repository [separate-repository-proposed] were unsuccessful
because compliance testing requires both a CLI and a config
specification [separate-repository-refused].  Trevor doesn't think
that's a solid reason [separate-repository-refusal-rebutted], but
discussion along that line stalled out, so the approach taken here is
to keep both independently versioned entities in the same repository.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

Aleksa Sarai also raised concerns over the safety of potentially
giving the container process access to terminal ioctl escapes
[stdio-ioctl] and feels like the stdio file-descriptor pass-through is
surprising [stdio-surprise].

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also moves the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.md
into runtime.md and the command-line docs.  Both affect runtime
authors, but:

* The runtime.md entry is more useful for bundle authors than the old
  wording, because it gives them confidence that the runtime caller
  will have the power to set these up as they see fit (within POSIX's
  limits).  It is also API-agnostic, so bundle authors know they won't
  have to worry about which API will be used to launch the container
  before deciding whether it is safe to rely on runtime-caller
  file-descriptor control.

* The command line entry is more useful for runtime-callers than the
  old wording, because it tells you how to setup the file descriptors
  instead of just telling you that they MAY be setup.

I moved the bundle-author language from runtime-linux.md to runtime.md
because it's relying on POSIX primitives that aren't Linux-specific.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having 'create' take a '--console-socket PATH' option (required when
  process.terminal is true) with a path to a SOCK_SEQPACKET Unix
  socket for use with the console-socket protocol.  The current
  'LISTEN_FDS + 3' approach was proposed by Michael Crosby
  [console-socket-fd], but Trevor doesn't have a clear idea of the
  motivation for the change and would have preferred '--console-socket
  FD'.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[console-socket-fd]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-10-19-21.00.log.html#l-30
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[interface-versioning]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[python-email-version]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/email.html#package-history
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[separate-repository-proposed]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[separate-repository-refused]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[separate-repository-refusal-rebutted]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[stdio-ioctl]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[stdio-surprise]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Nov 28, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Versioning

The command-line interface is largely orthogonal to the config format,
and config authors and runtime callers may be entirely different sets
of people.  Zhang Wei called for more explicit versioning for the CLI
[interface-versioning], and the approach taken here follows the
approach taken by Python's email package [python-email-version].

Wedging multiple, independently versioned entities into a single
repository can be awkward, but earlier proposals to put the CLI in its
own repository [separate-repository-proposed] were unsuccessful
because compliance testing requires both a CLI and a config
specification [separate-repository-refused].  Trevor doesn't think
that's a solid reason [separate-repository-refusal-rebutted], but
discussion along that line stalled out, so the approach taken here is
to keep both independently versioned entities in the same repository.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

Aleksa Sarai also raised concerns over the safety of potentially
giving the container process access to terminal ioctl escapes
[stdio-ioctl] and feels like the stdio file-descriptor pass-through is
surprising [stdio-surprise].

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also moves the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.md
into runtime.md and the command-line docs.  Both affect runtime
authors, but:

* The runtime.md entry is more useful for bundle authors than the old
  wording, because it gives them confidence that the runtime caller
  will have the power to set these up as they see fit (within POSIX's
  limits).  It is also API-agnostic, so bundle authors know they won't
  have to worry about which API will be used to launch the container
  before deciding whether it is safe to rely on runtime-caller
  file-descriptor control.

* The command line entry is more useful for runtime-callers than the
  old wording, because it tells you how to setup the file descriptors
  instead of just telling you that they MAY be setup.

I moved the bundle-author language from runtime-linux.md to runtime.md
because it's relying on POSIX primitives that aren't Linux-specific.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having 'create' take a '--console-socket PATH' option (required when
  process.terminal is true) with a path to a SOCK_SEQPACKET Unix
  socket for use with the console-socket protocol.  The current
  'LISTEN_FDS + 3' approach was proposed by Michael Crosby
  [console-socket-fd], but Trevor doesn't have a clear idea of the
  motivation for the change and would have preferred '--console-socket
  FD'.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[console-socket-fd]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-10-19-21.00.log.html#l-30
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[interface-versioning]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[python-email-version]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/email.html#package-history
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[separate-repository-proposed]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[separate-repository-refused]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[separate-repository-refusal-rebutted]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[stdio-ioctl]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[stdio-surprise]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Nov 28, 2016
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Versioning

The command-line interface is largely orthogonal to the config format,
and config authors and runtime callers may be entirely different sets
of people.  Zhang Wei called for more explicit versioning for the CLI
[interface-versioning], and the approach taken here follows the
approach taken by Python's email package [python-email-version].

Wedging multiple, independently versioned entities into a single
repository can be awkward, but earlier proposals to put the CLI in its
own repository [separate-repository-proposed] were unsuccessful
because compliance testing requires both a CLI and a config
specification [separate-repository-refused].  Trevor doesn't think
that's a solid reason [separate-repository-refusal-rebutted], but
discussion along that line stalled out, so the approach taken here is
to keep both independently versioned entities in the same repository.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

Aleksa Sarai also raised concerns over the safety of potentially
giving the container process access to terminal ioctl escapes
[stdio-ioctl] and feels like the stdio file-descriptor pass-through is
surprising [stdio-surprise].

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also moves the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.md
into runtime.md and the command-line docs.  Both affect runtime
authors, but:

* The runtime.md entry is more useful for bundle authors than the old
  wording, because it gives them confidence that the runtime caller
  will have the power to set these up as they see fit (within POSIX's
  limits).  It is also API-agnostic, so bundle authors know they won't
  have to worry about which API will be used to launch the container
  before deciding whether it is safe to rely on runtime-caller
  file-descriptor control.

* The command line entry is more useful for runtime-callers than the
  old wording, because it tells you how to setup the file descriptors
  instead of just telling you that they MAY be setup.

I moved the bundle-author language from runtime-linux.md to runtime.md
because it's relying on POSIX primitives that aren't Linux-specific.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having 'create' take a '--console-socket PATH' option (required when
  process.terminal is true) with a path to a SOCK_SEQPACKET Unix
  socket for use with the console-socket protocol.  The current
  'LISTEN_FDS + 3' approach was proposed by Michael Crosby
  [console-socket-fd], but Trevor doesn't have a clear idea of the
  motivation for the change and would have preferred '--console-socket
  FD'.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[console-socket-fd]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-10-19-21.00.log.html#l-30
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[interface-versioning]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[python-email-version]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/email.html#package-history
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[separate-repository-proposed]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[separate-repository-refused]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[separate-repository-refusal-rebutted]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[stdio-ioctl]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[stdio-surprise]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
@mrunalp
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mrunalp commented Jan 18, 2017

This should be post-1.0

@hqhq hqhq added this to the 1.1.0 milestone Jan 22, 2017
@hqhq
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hqhq commented Jan 22, 2017

I agree, I'm tagging it to v1.1.0.

wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Feb 1, 2017
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Versioning

The command-line interface is largely orthogonal to the config format,
and config authors and runtime callers may be entirely different sets
of people.  Zhang Wei called for more explicit versioning for the CLI
[interface-versioning], and the approach taken here follows the
approach taken by Python's email package [python-email-version].

Wedging multiple, independently versioned entities into a single
repository can be awkward, but earlier proposals to put the CLI in its
own repository [separate-repository-proposed] were unsuccessful
because compliance testing requires both a CLI and a config
specification [separate-repository-refused].  Trevor doesn't think
that's a solid reason [separate-repository-refusal-rebutted], but
discussion along that line stalled out, so the approach taken here is
to keep both independently versioned entities in the same repository.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

Aleksa Sarai also raised concerns over the safety of potentially
giving the container process access to terminal ioctl escapes
[stdio-ioctl] and feels like the stdio file-descriptor pass-through is
surprising [stdio-surprise].

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also moves the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.md
into runtime.md and the command-line docs.  Both affect runtime
authors, but:

* The runtime.md entry is more useful for bundle authors than the old
  wording, because it gives them confidence that the runtime caller
  will have the power to set these up as they see fit (within POSIX's
  limits).  It is also API-agnostic, so bundle authors know they won't
  have to worry about which API will be used to launch the container
  before deciding whether it is safe to rely on runtime-caller
  file-descriptor control.

* The command line entry is more useful for runtime-callers than the
  old wording, because it tells you how to setup the file descriptors
  instead of just telling you that they MAY be setup.

I moved the bundle-author language from runtime-linux.md to runtime.md
because it's relying on POSIX primitives that aren't Linux-specific.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having 'create' take a '--console-socket PATH' option (required when
  process.terminal is true) with a path to a SOCK_SEQPACKET Unix
  socket for use with the console-socket protocol.  The current
  'LISTEN_FDS + 3' approach was proposed by Michael Crosby
  [console-socket-fd], but Trevor doesn't have a clear idea of the
  motivation for the change and would have preferred '--console-socket
  FD'.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[console-socket-fd]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-10-19-21.00.log.html#l-30
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[interface-versioning]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[python-email-version]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/email.html#package-history
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[separate-repository-proposed]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[separate-repository-refused]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[separate-repository-refusal-rebutted]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[stdio-ioctl]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[stdio-surprise]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
@crosbymichael
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REJECT

Reading over this again I'm putting in my formal reject for this. It is totally about implementation and if something wants to do this it can but it has no place specifying this because it places too many implantation constrains on the runtimes and is basically telling runtime devs that they need daemons or other fsnotify logic to build an events system.

Keep the spec small and useful and build higher level things on top or else we will just have a bloated spec that it unusable.

@wking
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wking commented Feb 3, 2017

[It] is basically telling runtime devs that they need daemons or other fsnotify logic to build an events system.

You can also implement this by polling state (approach 3 in my initial post). And the runtime portion doesn't have to use inotify (it just writes events to a directory). The inotify watcher can be a completely separate project.

Keep the spec small and useful and build higher level things on top or else we will just have a bloated spec that it unusable.

But as the spec stands there is no portable way to collect the container's exit code. We need something like this PR as a base for that; you can't build it into a higher level. Of course, it could be part of a parallel spec, in which case folks who wanted a portable way to collect the container's exit code would look for both runtime-spec compliance and event-operation compliance, but I think we should have a clearer reason for splitting those apart when the bar is as low as “polling state” or “writing events to a directory on a platform that supports inotify”.

@cyphar
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cyphar commented Feb 3, 2017

@wking Can you explain how this race can be handled with nothing but a directory full of files?

To support blocking on the event without racing on “maybe the created event happened before the event operation attached”.

As far as I can tell, there's no nice way of removing events from the head of the event queue without having an actual queue structure (which the VFS is not). And reading/writing to a single file is not a good idea. The only solution I could come up with is basically having a single-file database, which is way overkill...

@wking
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wking commented Feb 3, 2017 via email

@mikebrow
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mikebrow commented Feb 3, 2017

From my post back in July.. "Just thinking out loud.. can't we map the event notifications to Mrunal's hooks and store event subscriptions as annotations?"

@wking given Michael's strong Reject, what do you think of turning this idea into a code sample for using the hooks to show how runc can be extended, tested, monitored...?

@wking
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wking commented Feb 3, 2017

given Michael's strong Reject, what do you think of turning this idea into a code sample for using the hooks to show how runc can be extended, tested, monitored...?

Hooks won't let you wait on the container process to collect it's exit code. You wouldn't need that with a long-running create, but a long-running create is effectively the daemon runC has ruled out. But some process is waiting to reap the container process (maybe it's container D's shim?). This event operation allows for more flexibility in how the runtime structures that, while giving a more portable caller API than the platform-specific magic currently proposed in #513.

But if you see a way to handle this with hooks, please file it as an alternative PR. I just don't see it at the moment.

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mikebrow commented Feb 3, 2017

@wking does that mean you don't want to make this a code sample? The inability to collect exit codes as referenced by your opencontainers/runtime-tools#305 should be addressed. @mrunalp are we missing a hook here? If we're going to have hooks to cover the lifecycle of containers that would be an obvious one one to have. But that's separate from should we specify these events in the runtime spec.

wking pushed a commit to wking/opencontainer-runtime-spec that referenced this pull request Feb 8, 2017
# Commands

## create

The --bundle [start-pr-bundle] and --pid-file options and ID argument
[runc-start-id] match runC's interface.

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).
Trevor still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier, see the entry under rejected-for-now
avenues at the end of this commit message.

### --pid-file

You can get the PID by calling 'state' [container-pid-from-state], and
container PIDs may not be portable [container-pid-not-portable].  But
it's a common way for interfacing with init systems like systemd
[systemd-pid], and for this first pass at the command line API folks
are ok with some Linux-centrism [linux-centric].

### Document LISTEN_FDS for passing open file descriptors

This landed in runC with [runc-listen-fds], but the bundle-author <->
runtime specs explicitly avoided talking about how this is set (since
the bundle-author didn't care about the runtime-caller <-> runtime
interface) [runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic].  This commit steps away
from that agnosticism.

Trevor left LISTEN_PID [sd_listen_fds,listen-fds-description] out,
since he doesn't see how the runtime-caller would choose anything
other than 1 for its value.  It seems like something that a process
would have to set for itself (because guessing the PID of a child
before spawning it seems racy ;).  In any event, the runC
implementation seems to set this to 1 regardless of what systemd
passes to it [listen-fds-description].

We've borrowed Shishir's wording for the example
[listen-fds-description].

## state [state-pr]

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@7117ede7 (Expand
on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
opencontainers#225, v0.4.0).  The state example is
adapted from runtime.md, but we defer the actual specification of the
JSON to that file.

The encoding for the output JSON (and all standard-stream activity) is
covered by the "Character encodings" section.  In cases where the
runtime ignores the SHOULD (still technically compliant), RFC 7159
makes encoding detection reasonably straightforward [rfc7159-s8.1].
The obsolete RFC 4627 has some hints as well [rfc4627-s3] (although
these were dropped in RFC 7518 [rfc7518-aA], probably as a result of
removing the constraint that "JSON text" be an object or array
[rfc7518-aA]).  The hints should still apply to the state output,
because we know it will be an object.  If that ends up being too dicey
and we want to certify runtimes that do not respect their
operating-system conventions, we can add an --encoding option later.

## kill

Partially catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split
create and start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers#384).  The
interface is based on POSIX [posix-kill], util-linux
[util-linux-kill], and GNU coreutils [coreutils-kill].

The TERM/KILL requirement is a minimum portability requirement for
soft/hard stops.  Windows lacks POSIX signals [windows-signals], and
currently supports soft stops in Docker with whatever is behind
hcsshim.ShutdownComputeSystem [docker-hcsshim].  The docs we're
landing here explicitly allow that sort of substitution, because we
need to have soft/hard stop on those platforms but *can't* use POSIX
signals.  They borrow wording from
opencontainers/runtime-spec@35b0e9ee (config: Clarify MUST for
platform.os and .arch, 2016-05-19, opencontainers#441) to
recommend runtime authors document the alternative technology so
bundle-authors can prepare (e.g. by installing the equivalent to a
SIGTERM signal handler).

# Command style

Use imperative phrasing for command summaries, to follow the practice
recommended by Python's PEP 257 [pep257-docstring]:

  The docstring is a phrase ending in a period. It prescribes the
  function or method's effect as a command ("Do this", "Return that"),
  not as a description; e.g. don't write "Returns the pathname ...".

The commands have the following layout:

  ### {command name}

  {one-line description}

  * *Options:* ...
  ...
  * *Exit code:* ...

  {additional notes}

  #### Example

  {example}

The four-space list indents follow opencontainers/runtime-spec@7795661
(runtime.md: Fix sub-bullet indentation, 2016-06-08,
opencontainers#495).  From [markdown-syntax]:

  List items may consist of multiple paragraphs.  Each subsequent
  paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one
  tab...

Trevor expects that's intended to be read with "block element" instead
of "paragraph", in which case it applies to nested lists too.

And while GitHub supports two-space indents [github-lists]:

  You can create nested lists by indenting lines by two spaces.

it seems that pandoc does not.

# Versioning

The command-line interface is largely orthogonal to the config format,
and config authors and runtime callers may be entirely different sets
of people.  Zhang Wei called for more explicit versioning for the CLI
[interface-versioning], and the approach taken here follows the
approach taken by Python's email package [python-email-version].

Wedging multiple, independently versioned entities into a single
repository can be awkward, but earlier proposals to put the CLI in its
own repository [separate-repository-proposed] were unsuccessful
because compliance testing requires both a CLI and a config
specification [separate-repository-refused].  Trevor doesn't think
that's a solid reason [separate-repository-refusal-rebutted], but
discussion along that line stalled out, so the approach taken here is
to keep both independently versioned entities in the same repository.

# Global options

This section is intended to allow runtimes to extend the command line
API with additional options and commands as they see fit without
interfering with the commands and options specified in this document.
The last line in this section makes it explicit that any later
specification (e.g. "MUST print the state JSON to its stdout") do not
apply to cases where the caller has included an unspecified option or
command (e.g. --format=protobuf).  For extensive discussion on this
point see [extensions-unspecified].

With regard to the statement "Command names MUST NOT start with
hyphens", the rationale behind this decision is to distinguish
unrecognized commands from unrecognized options
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands] because we want to allow (but not
require) runtimes to fail fast when faced with an unrecognized
command [optional-fail-fast].

# Long options

Use GNU-style long options to avoid ambiguous, one-character options
in the spec, while still allowing the runtime to support one-character
options with packing.  We don't specify one-character options in this
spec, because portable callers can use the long form, and not
specifying short forms leaves runtimes free to assign those as they
see fit.

# Character encodings

Punt to the operating system for character encodings.  Without this,
the character set for the state JSON or other command output seemed
too ambiguous.

Trevor wishes there were cleaner references for the
{language}.{encoding} locales like en_US.UTF-8 and UTF-8.  But
[wikipedia-utf-8,wikipedia-posix-locale] seems too glib, and he can't
find a more targetted UTF-8 link than just dropping folks into a
Unicode chapter (which is what [wikipedia-utf-8] does):

  The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, §3.9 D92, §3.10 D95 (2011)

With the current v8.0 (2015-06-17), it's still §3.9 D92 and §3.10 D95.

The TR35 link is for:

  In addition, POSIX locales may also specify the character encoding,
  which requires the data to be transformed into that target encoding.

and the POSIX §6.2 link is for:

  In other locales, the presence, meaning, and representation of any
  additional characters are locale-specific.

# Standard streams

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

Aleksa Sarai also raised concerns over the safety of potentially
giving the container process access to terminal ioctl escapes
[stdio-ioctl] and feels like the stdio file-descriptor pass-through is
surprising [stdio-surprise].

# Console socket protocol

Based on in-flight work by Aleksa in opencontainers/runc#1018, this
commit makes the following choices:

* SOCK_SEQPACKET instead of SOCK_STREAM, because this is a
  message-based protocol, so it seems more natural to use a
  message-oriented socket type.

* A string 'type' field for all messages, so we can add additional
  message types in the future without breaking backwards compatibility
  (new console-socket servers will still support old clients).  Aleksa
  favored splitting this identifier into an integer 'type' and
  'version' fields [runc-socket-type-version], but I don't see the
  point if they're both opaque integers without internal structure.
  And I expect this protocol to be stable enough that it's not worth
  involving SemVer and its structured versioning.

* Response messages, so the client can tell whether the request was
  received and processed successfully or not.  That gives the client a
  way to bail out if, for example, the server does not support the
  'terminal' message type.

* Add a sub-package specs-go/socket.  Even though there aren't many
  new types, these are fairly different from the rest of specs-go and
  that namespace was getting crowded.

# Event triggers

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

For an alternative event trigger approach, see the discussion of an
'event' command in the rejected-for-now avenues at the end of this
commit message.

# Lifecycle notes

These aren't documented in the current runtime-spec, and may no longer
be true.  But they were true at one point, and informed the
development of this specification.

## Process cleanup

On IRC on 2015-09-15 (with PDT timestamps):

  10:56 < crosbymichael> if the main process dies in the container,
    all other process are killed
  ...
  10:58 < julz> crosbymichael: I'm assuming what you mean is you kill
    everything in the cgroup -> everything in the container dies?
  10:58 < crosbymichael> julz: yes, that is how its implemented
  ...
  10:59 < crosbymichael> julz: we actually freeze first, send the
    KILL, then unfreeze so we don't have races

## Container IDs for namespace joiners

You can create a config that adds no isolation vs. the runtime
namespace or completely joins another set of existing namespaces.  It
seems odd to call that a new "container", but the ID is really more of
a process ID, and less of a container ID.  The "container" phrasing is
just a useful hint that there might be some isolation going on.  And
we're always creating a new "container process" with 'create'.

# Other changes

This commit also moves the file-descriptor docs from runtime-linux.md
into runtime.md and the command-line docs.  Both affect runtime
authors, but:

* The runtime.md entry is more useful for bundle authors than the old
  wording, because it gives them confidence that the runtime caller
  will have the power to set these up as they see fit (within POSIX's
  limits).  It is also API-agnostic, so bundle authors know they won't
  have to worry about which API will be used to launch the container
  before deciding whether it is safe to rely on runtime-caller
  file-descriptor control.

* The command line entry is more useful for runtime-callers than the
  old wording, because it tells you how to setup the file descriptors
  instead of just telling you that they MAY be setup.

I moved the bundle-author language from runtime-linux.md to runtime.md
because it's relying on POSIX primitives that aren't Linux-specific.

# Avenues pursued but rejected (for now)

* Early versions of this specification had 'start' taking '--config'
  and '--runtime', but this commit uses '--bundle' [start-pr-bundle].

  The single config file change [single-config-proposal] went through,
  but Trevor would also like to be able to pipe a config into the
  'funC start' command (e.g. via a /dev/fd/3 pseudo-filesystem path)
  [runc-config-via-stdin], and he has a working example that supports
  this without difficulty [ccon-config-via-stdin].  But since
  [runc-bundle-option] landed on 2015-11-16, runC has replaced their
  --config-file and --runtime-file flags with --bundle, and the
  current goal of this API is "keeping as much similarity with the
  existing runC command-line as possible", not "makes sense to Trevor"
  ;).  It looks like runC was reacting [runc-required-config-file] to
  strict wording in the spec [runtime-spec-required-config-file], so
  we might be able to revisit this if/when we lift that restriction.

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take a --state option to write state
  to a file [start-pr-state].  This is my preferred approach to
  sharing container state, since it punts a persistent state registry
  to higher-level tooling [punt-state-registry].  But runtime-spec
  currently requires the runtime to maintain such a registry
  [state-registry], and we don't need two ways to do that ;).

  On systems like Solaris, the kernel maintains a registry of
  container IDs directly, so they don't need an external registry
  [solaris-kernel-state].

* Having 'start' (now 'create') take an --id option instead of a
  required ID argument, and requiring the runtime to generate a unique
  ID if the option was not set.  When there is a long-running host
  process waiting on the container process to perform cleanup, the
  runtime-caller may not need to know the container ID.  However, runC
  has been requiring a user-specified ID since [runc-start-id], and
  this spec follows the early-exit 'create' from [runc-create-start],
  so we require one here.  We can revisit this if we regain a
  long-running 'create' process.

* Having 'create' take a '--console-socket PATH' option (required when
  process.terminal is true) with a path to a SOCK_SEQPACKET Unix
  socket for use with the console-socket protocol.  The current
  'LISTEN_FDS + 3' approach was proposed by Michael Crosby
  [console-socket-fd], but Trevor doesn't have a clear idea of the
  motivation for the change and would have preferred '--console-socket
  FD'.

* Having a long-running 'create' process.  Trevor is not a big fan of
  this early-exit 'create', which requires platform-specific magic to
  collect the container process's exit code.  The ptrace idea in this
  commit is from Mrunal [mrunal-ptrace].

  Trevor has a proposal for an 'event' operation [event] which would
  provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in place, we
  don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that trigger, and
  could have a long-running 'create' that collects the container
  process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But the
  consensus after this week's meeting was to table that while we land
  docs for the runC API [mimic-runc].

* Having a 'version' command to make it easy for a caller to report
  which runtime they're using.  But we don't have a use-case that
  makes it strictly necessary for interop, so we're leaving it out for
  now [no-version].

* Using 'sh' syntax highlighting [syntax-highlighting] for the fenced
  code blocks.  The 'sh' keyword comes from [linguist-languages].  But
  the new fenced code blocks are shell sessions, not scripts, and we
  don't want shell-syntax highlighting in the command output.

[ccon-config-via-stdin]: https://github.com/wking/ccon/tree/v0.4.0#configuration
[console-socket-fd]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-10-19-21.00.log.html#l-30
[container-pid-from-state]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/511/files#r70353376
  Subject: Add initial pass at a cmd line spec
[container-pid-not-portable]: opencontainers#459
  Subject: [ Runtime ] Allow for excluding pid from state
[coreutils-kill]: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/kill-invocation.html
[distinguish-unrecognized-commands]: https://github.com/wking/oci-command-line-api/pull/8/files#r46898167
  Subject: Clarity for commands vs global options
[docker-hcsshim]: https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/16997/files#diff-5d0b72cccc4809455d52aadc62329817R230
  moby/moby@bc503ca8 (Windows: [TP4] docker kill handling,
  2015-10-12, moby/moby#16997)
[event]: opencontainers#508
  Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[extensions-unspecified]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-27.log.html#t2016-07-27T16:37:56
[github-lists]: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/#lists
[interface-versioning]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[linguist-languages]: https://github.com/github/linguist/blob/master/lib/linguist/languages.yml
[linux-centric]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-39
[listen-fds-description]: opencontainers/runc#231 (comment)
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[markdown-syntax]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
[mimic-runc]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[mrunal-ptrace]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54
[no-version]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-75
[optional-fail-fast]: wking/oci-command-line-api@527f3c6#commitcomment-14835617
  Subject: Use RFC 2119's keywords (MUST, MAY, ...)
[pep257-docstring]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/#one-line-docstrings
[posix-kill]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/kill.html
[punt-state-registry]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2015/opencontainers.2015-12-02-18.01.log.html#l-79
[python-email-version]: https://docs.python.org/3/library/email.html#package-history
[rfc4627-s3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627#section-3
[rfc7158-aA]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7158#appendix-A
  RFC 7518 is currently identical to 7519.
[rfc7159-s8.1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159#section-8.1
[runc-bundle-option]: opencontainers/runc#373
  Subject: adding support for --bundle
[runc-config-via-stdin]: opencontainers/runc#202
  Subject: Can runc take its configuration on stdin?
[runc-listen-fds]: opencontainers/runc#231
  Subject: Systemd integration with runc, for on-demand socket
    activation
[runc-required-config-file]: opencontainers/runc#310 (comment)
  Subject: specifying a spec file on cmd line?
[runc-socket-type-version]: opencontainers/runc#1018 (comment)
  Subject: Consoles, consoles, consoles.
[runc-start-id]: opencontainers/runc#541
  opencontainers/runc@a7278cad (Require container id as arg1,
  2016-02-08, opencontainers/runc#541)
[runtime-spec-caller-api-agnostic]: opencontainers#113 (comment)
  Subject: Add fd section for linux container process
[runtime-spec-required-config-file]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/210/files#diff-8b310563f1c6f616aa98e6aeffc4d394R14
  106ec2d (Cleanup bundle.md, 2015-10-02,
  opencontainers#210)
[sd_listen_fds]: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/sd_listen_fds.html
[separate-repository-proposed]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[separate-repository-refused]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[separate-repository-refusal-rebutted]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[single-config-proposal]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/0QbyJDM9fWY
  Subject: Single, unified config file (i.e. rolling back specs#88)
  Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 09:53:20 -0800
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[solaris-kernel-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#3 (comment)
  Subject: Drop exec, pause, resume, and signal
[start-pr-bundle]: wking/oci-command-line-api#11
  Subject: start: Change --config and --runtime to --bundle
[start-pr-state]: wking/oci-command-line-api#14
  Subject: start: Add a --state option
[state-pr]: wking/oci-command-line-api#16
  Subject: runtime: Add a 'state' command
[state-registry]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/pull/225/files#diff-b84a8d65d8ed53f4794cd2db7e8ea731R61
  7117ede (Expand on the definition of our ops, 2015-10-13,
  opencontainers#225)
[stdio-ioctl]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[stdio-surprise]: opencontainers#513 (comment)
[syntax-highlighting]: https://help.github.com/articles/github-flavored-markdown/#syntax-highlighting
[systemd-pid]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-20-21.03.log.html#l-69
[util-linux-kill]: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/kill.1.html
[wikipedia-utf-8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
[wikipedia-posix-locale]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale#POSIX_platforms
[windows-singals]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/forum/#!topic/dev/PlGKu7QUwLE
  Subject: Fwd: Windows support for OCI stop/signal/kill (runtime-spec#356)
  Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:03:29 -0700
  Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by: Julian Friedman <[email protected]>
Hopefully-Signed-off-by: Mike Brown <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jesse Butler <[email protected]>
wking added a commit to wking/oci-command-line-api that referenced this pull request Feb 9, 2017
Catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split create and
start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers/runtime-spec#384).

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).

I still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier.  I've proposed an 'event' operation
[1] which would provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in
place, we don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that
trigger, and could have a long-running 'create' that collects the
container process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But
the consensus after the 2016-07-13 meeting was to table that while we
land docs for the runC API [2], and runC has an early-exit create [3].

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

The ptrace idea in this commit is from Mrunal [4].

[1]: opencontainers/runtime-spec#508
     Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[2]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[3]: opencontainers/runc#827
     Summary: Implement create and start
[4]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
wking added a commit to wking/oci-command-line-api that referenced this pull request Feb 9, 2017
Catch up with opencontainers/runtime-spec@be594153 (Split create and
start, 2016-04-01, opencontainers/runtime-spec#384).

One benefit of the early-exit 'create' is that the exit code does not
conflate container process exits with "failed to setup the sandbox"
exits.  We can take advantage of that and use non-zero 'create' exits
to allow stderr writing (so the runtime can log errors while dying
without having to successfully connect to syslog or some such).

I still likes the long-running 'create' API because it makes
collecting the exit code easier.  I've proposed an 'event' operation
[1] which would provide a convenient created trigger.  With 'event' in
place, we don't need the 'create' process exit to serve as that
trigger, and could have a long-running 'create' that collects the
container process exit code using the portable waitid() family.  But
the consensus after the 2016-07-13 meeting was to table that while we
land docs for the runC API [2], and runC has an early-exit create [3].

The "Callers MAY block..." wording is going to be hard to enforce, but
with the runC model, clients rely on the command exits to trigger
post-create and post-start activity.  The longer the runtime hangs
around after completing its action, the laggier those triggers will
be.

The "MUST NOT attempt to read from its stdin" means a generic caller
can safely exec the command with a closed or null stdin, and not have
to worry about the command blocking or crashing because of that.  The
stdout spec for start/delete is more lenient, because runtimes are
unlikely to change their behavior because they are unable to write to
stdout.  If this assumption proves troublesome, we may have to tighten
it up later.

The ptrace idea in this commit is from Mrunal [4].

[1]: opencontainers/runtime-spec#508
     Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to pushes
[2]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/opencontainers/2016/opencontainers.2016-07-13-17.03.log.html#l-15
[3]: opencontainers/runc#827
     Summary: Implement create and start
[4]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-07-13.log.html#t2016-07-13T18:58:54

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <[email protected]>
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vbatts commented Mar 8, 2017

folks are generally in agreement that this is not needed in at the runtime layer, but would be a fine feature to happen higher in the stack

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wking commented Mar 9, 2017 via email

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wking commented Jun 15, 2017

If you have some insider knowledge about the runtime implementation (e.g. you know the container process will be an ancestor of the runtime create process and you are on Linux) the create caller can reach around the runtime by setting PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER or similar …

And this is what containerd does, with subreaper set here, the create wrapper adding a SIGCHLD-based reaper, and the reaping triggering an exit event. There are currently plans to allow public access to these events (containerd/containerd#785, containerd/containerd#956), but the implementation is based on the assumption that the container process is an ancestor of the create call, and that the container process has no closer subreaper ancestor. Neither of those assumptions are backed by the spec, which means containerd needs a runtime that is similar enough to runC to work, and cannot be safely used with a generic runtime-spec-compliant Linux runtime.

wking added a commit to wking/ccon that referenced this pull request Feb 26, 2018
Along the lines of the create/start split we've been discussing for
the OCI [1,2].  Pull some common functionality into a libccon,
although I don't intend to make that a more than an internal helper.

Post-error cleanup in ccon-cli is pretty slim, since the process is
just about to die anyway.  I'll probably go back through and add
proper cleanup later.

serve_socket gets too deeply nested for my taste, but it's not quite
to the point where I'd pull out the request handling into a
handle_start_request helper or some such.  Mostly because I'd have to
either setup a new buf/iov/msg in the helper's stack or pass that all
through from serve_socket ;).

A few notes on the tests:

I don't have a stand-alone 'wait' on my system (it's built into most
shells [3]), but I've added an explicit check for it because POSIX
doesn't require it to be built in.

The waiting in the create/start tests is a bit awkward, but here's the
reasoning for the various steps:

* Put the socket in a 'sock' subdirectory so we don't have to mess
  with inotifywait's --exclude (when what we really want is an
  --include).  In most cases, the socket would be the first thing
  created in the test directory, but the process.host test will create
  a pivot-root.* before creating the socket.

* Clear a 'wait' file before launching the inotifywait/start subshell
  and append to it from that subshell so grep has something to look at
  (even if it racily starts looking before the subshell processes the
  inotifywait line).

* Block on a busy-wait grep until inotifywait sets up its watcher.
  This ensures we don't call ccon and create the socket before the
  watcher is looking.

  The zero-second sleep while we wait for inotifywait to setup its
  watcher is busy, but POSIX doesn't require 'sleep' to support
  non-integer times [4].

All of these issues could be abstracted out into an 'event' command
[5], but they're fine for a proof-of-concept create/start split.

[1]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/d/msg/dev/qWHoKs8Fsrk/k55FQrBzBgAJ
     Subject: Re: Splitting Start into create() and run()
     Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 15:04:14 -0700
     Message-ID: <[email protected]>
[2]: opencontainers/runtime-spec#384
     Subject: Split create and start
[3]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap01.html#tag_17_06
[4]: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/sleep.html
[5]: opencontainers/runtime-spec#508
     Subject: runtime: Add an 'event' operation for subscribing to
       pushes
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7 participants