README

    make-crontab
    ============

    Manage different cronjobs with only one system user.


Authors:  Volker Grabsch, Matthias Pohl
Homepage: https://github.com/m-click/make-crontab
Requires: GNU Make


make-crontab is used for the crontab management on servers with several
web applications, where each application can edit their own cronjob
information. The key feature of this system is the need of only one
system user (usually the apache user) to do this job.

The applications can not only edit their own cronjob informationen but
also add new cronjobs without mixing up the croninfo with the other apps.

In the directory make-crontab a makefile and some content files
containing the cronjob informationen of each application are located.
These content files are named according to the name pattern
'crontab-app1', 'crontab-app2'.

The content files can be written by the applications directly.

If the makefile is called, it merges all files of the pattern crontab-*
to one crontab file, which will then be installed as the crontab for the
system user. The makefile checks for updates on the content files and
installs the crontab only if required.

In order to keep this process running, the makefile must be called
regularly. For this purpose an additional crontab entry starts the
make crontab procedure every minute.

The crontab-* files may contain special variables:
    @NAME@ - file name without the 'crontab-' prefix
    @PWD@  - absolute path to the make crontab directory

Assume the file 'crontab-app2' contains:
    0 8 * * *  /usr/lib/@NAME@/my-important-script.sh
Then the final crontab will contain:
    0 8 * * *  /usr/lib/app2/my-important-script.sh