Goatherd

Goatherd is free, open source, languange independend, fast and lightweight load balancer with build-in process manager for any TCP/IP serivces. It's written using modern c++17 and well-known libraries like Boost.Asio for networking or Boost.Process for process monitoring.

Features

• simple load ballancer using round-robin,
• TCP/IP or Unix sockets,
• process monitor
• Hot-code reload,

Requirements

To build Goatherd you will need:

• Modern c++ compiler (C++17 language support)
• Boost library (1.64+)
• cmake (tested on 3.5)
• wget - needed for downloading dependecies
• git - needed for downloading dependecies

Building

Building Goatherd is very simple:

git clone https://github.com/crazy-goat/goatherd.git
cd goatherd
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DUSE_INTERNAL_BOOST=ON -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/usr ..
make
make install

If you have installed boost library, you can remove -DUSE_INTERNAL_BOOST=ON option

Binaries

CrazyGoat provide binaries for Ubuntu/Debian and AlpineLinux. Binaries can be found in releases.

Installing on Ubuntu/Debian

wget https://github.com/crazy-goat/goatherd/releases/download/v0.3.1/goatherd-0.3.1.deb
dpkg -i goatherd-0.3.1.deb

Installing on AlpineLinux

wget https://github.com/crazy-goat/goatherd/releases/download/v0.3.1/goatherd-0.3.1-r0.apk
apk add --allow-untrusted goatherd-0.3.1-r0.apk 

paramter `--allow-untrusted' is required as apk is self-signed

Running

Goatherd requires only one parameter to run - path to config file

goatherd my_service.json

Configure

Look at this minimal config file.

{
  "listenSocket": "tcp://0.0.0.0:1234",
  "workerCount" : 5,
  "watchDir" : "src",
  "worker" : {
    "command" : "src/app-tcp.php",
    "params": "%%socket%%",
    "workerSocket" : "tcp://127.0.0.1:6000"
  }
}

It will start goatherd on TCP port 1234. It will spawn 5 workers listening on ports 6000-6004. If dir src change, goatherd will restart all workers.

listenSocket - can be TCP tcp://0.0.0.0:1234or Unix socket unix:///tmp/goatherd.sock

workerCount - number of spawned workers

watchDir - path to direcotry, if this content changes all workers will be restarted. This can be relative path from working dir.

worker.command - path to worker executable. Can be relative path.

worker.params - worker optional params. The %%socket%% variable is used to pass port (TCP) or socket (Unix socket) number.

worker.workerSocket - can be TCP tcp://127.0.0.1:1234or Unix socket unix:///tmp/goatherd.sock

More config examples can be found in examples dir.