Upstart is an event-based replacement for the /sbin/init daemon which
handles starting of tasks and services during boot, stopping them
during shutdown and supervising them while the system is running.

It is intended to be suitable for deployment in all Linux
distributions as a replacement for the venerable sysvinit package.

Feature highlights:

 * tasks and Services are started and stopped by events;

 * events are generated as tasks and services are run and stopped;

 * events may also be generated at timed intervals, or when files are
   changed (not yet implemented);

 * events may be received from any other process on the system;

 * services may be respawned if they die unexpectedly

 * bi-directional communication with init daemon to discover which
   jobs are running, why jobs failed, etc.


Dependencies
------------

Since Upstart's primary usage will be on distributions that utilise
the user-space event mechanisms only found in recent Linux kernel
versions, it has been developed to take advantage of other operating
system and language features that may not be available in older
releases of the kernel, C library or compiler.

The recommended versions are:

	* Linux 2.6.17 or later
	* GCC 4.1 or later
	* GNU C Library (glibc) 2.4 or later

These should all be available from the current release of any modern
Linux distribution.

For detailed compilation and installation instructions see the INSTALL
file.  If you've checked Upstart out from revision control, or want to
hack on Upstart, see the HACKING file.
