Previously, we have called java as a child process of the startup
script. This is a bit problematic, as killing the startup script (in a
non-interactive setting, e.g., by running via a script that enforces a
time limit or killing it via a process manager) does not necessarily kill the
Java child process. This can leave potentially long-running Java processes
consuming resources floating around.
We avoid this by using 'exec java ...' to invoke Java, which replaces
the shell process with the Java process for PRISM, keeping the process
ID.
As a fallback, if it turns out there a unforseen problems with the new
exec-based approach, one can set the environment variable
PRISM_NO_EXEC to 'yes' to obtain the old behaviour, i.e.,
export PRISM_NO_EXEC=yes
bin/prism ...
Joachim Klein
615d3c2147