Mcron

Introduction to Mcron

The GNU package mcron (Mellor's cron) is a 100% compatible replacement for Vixie cron. It is written in pure Guile, and allows configuration files to be written in scheme (as well as Vixie's original format) for infinite flexibility in specifying when jobs should be run. Mcron was written by Dale Mellor (see his personal web pages).

Mcron was proposed to the FSF (2003-07-11) as a component of the GNU system, and accepted on 2003-12-02. Version 1.0.1 was the first release of mcron as a GNU package homed at gnu.org.

A copy of a white paper describes the motivation and initial design concepts of mcron.

The manual describes how the realized incarnation of mcron works, and explains how its functionality can be incorporated into other projects. This is distributed in all the releases, and the latest one can be perused online by clicking the link above.

Releases of Mcron

1.0.8 --- 2014-05-25 --- DOWNLOAD

Build infrastructure changes to allow production of minimal man page (required by Debian) using standard autotools methods.

1.0.7 --- 2014-04-28

We now run, only, against guile-2.0.

1.0.6 --- 2010-06-19

The only changes in this version are technicalities in the wording of license notices, most of which have been replaced with standard GNU wording as exemplified in the GNU hello package. A declaration of the invariance of front and back sections of the texinfo documentation (of which there actually are none) has been removed.

We have now been accepted as a Debian package, and testing is currently underway in the Squeeze distribution.

1.0.5 --- 2010-06-13

The only changes in this version are technical build issues which make the package more parsimonious with the Debian package system; we are currently working to produce such a (Debian) package!

• Usefully, there is now a --enable-no-vixie-clobber argument to configure which allows root users to install the package alongside an existing legacy cron implementation without interference.
• Much less usefully, there is now a stub of a manpage.

See the complete release history.

Administration of Mcron

This package is being distributed through the holes http://www.gnu.org/software/mcron (this page) and ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/mcron. There are no longer any dedicated mailing lists for this package; all correspondence should be to the author, for example through the Savannah portal (see below).

For more information on the development of mcron and to access the source code repositories please visit mcron's Savannah page.