recur

recur is a command-line tool that runs a single command repeatedly until it succeeds or allowed attempts run out. It implements optional exponential backoff with configurable jitter. It lets you define the success condition.

Requirements

Python 3.9 or later, PyPI package simpleeval (installed automatically with recur-command).

Installation

The recommended way to install recur is from PyPI with pipx.

pipx install recur-command
# or
pip install --user recur-command

recur is also available for download as a single-file Python ZIP application or "zipapp" with its dependencies included. A regular Python interpreter can run zipapps. Zipapps are attached to GitLab releases as .pyz files. They are automatically built for commits.

Usage

usage: recur [-h] [-V] [-b BACKOFF] [-c COND] [-d DELAY] [-j JITTER] [-m MAX]
             [-t TRIES] [-v]
             command ...

Retry a command with exponential backoff and jitter.

positional arguments:
  command               command to run
  args                  arguments

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -V, --version         show program's version number and exit
  -b BACKOFF, --backoff BACKOFF
                        multiplier applied to delay on every attempt (default:
                        1, no backoff)
  -c COND, --condition COND
                        success condition (simpleeval expression, default:
                        "code == 0")
  -d DELAY, --delay DELAY
                        constant or initial exponential delay (seconds,
                        default: 0)
  -j JITTER, --jitter JITTER
                        additional random delay (maximum seconds or "min,max"
                        seconds, default: "0,0")
  -m MAX, --max-delay MAX
                        maximum delay (seconds, default: 3600)
  -t TRIES, --tries TRIES
                        maximum number of attempts (negative for infinite,
                        default: 5)
  -v, --verbose         announce exit code and attempt number; adds debug
                        information for errors if used twice

recur exits with the last command's exit code, unless the user overrides this in the condition. When the command is not found during the last attempt, recur exits with the code 255.

The CLI options are modeled after the parameters of the retry decorator, which Python programmers may recognize. However, recur does not use retry. The jitter (random delay) behavior is different. Jitter is applied starting with the first retry, not the second. I think this is what the user expects. A single-number jitter argument results in random, not constant, jitter.

Conditions

recur supports a limited form of scripting. It allows you to set the success condition using the simpleeval expression language, which is a subset of Python. The default condition is code == 0. It means recur will stop retrying when the exit code of the command is zero.

You can use the following variables in the condition expression:

• attempt: int — the number of the current attempt, starting with one. Combine with --tries -1 to use the condition instead of the built-in attempt counter.
• code: int | None — the exit code of the last command. code is None when the command was not found.
• command_found: bool — whether the last command was found.
• time: float — the time the most recent attempt took, in seconds.
• total_time: float — the time between the start of the first attempt and the end of the most recent, again in seconds.
• max_tries: int — the value of the option --tries.

recur defines one custom function:

• exit(code: int | None) -> None — exit with the exit code. If code is None, exit with the exit code for a missing command (255).

This function allows you to override the default behavior of returning the last command's exit code. For example, you can make recur exit with success when the command fails.

recur --condition 'code != 0 and exit(0)' sh -c 'exit 1'
# or
recur --condition 'exit(0) if code != 0 else False' sh -c 'exit 1'

In the following example we stop early and do not retry when the command's exit code indicates incorrect usage or a problem with the installation.

recur --condition 'code == 0 or (code in {1, 2, 3, 4} and exit(code))' curl "$url"

License

MIT.

Alternatives

recur was inspired by retry-cli. I wanted something like retry-cli, but without the Node.js dependency. There are other tools like this.

• retry (joshdk). Written in Go. go install github.com/joshdk/retry@master.
• retry (kadwanev). Written in Bash.
• retry (minfrin). Written in C. Packaged in Debian and Ubuntu. sudo apt install retry.
• retry (timofurrer). Written in Rust. cargo install retry-cmd.
• retry-cli. Written in JavaScript for Node.js. npx retry-cli.