PySentry

PySentry is a cross-platform desktop scheduler inspired by cron. It provides a native GUI for creating, grouping, pausing, running, and monitoring scheduled shell commands.

Features

• Native desktop GUI built with Fyne.
• Job storage in one clean YAML file.
• App settings in a separate YAML file.
• @every schedules and standard 5-field cron expressions.
• Manual and scheduled command runs.
• Per-run .log files with stdout/stderr.
• Log cleanup by maximum file count and maximum age.
• Global pause/resume for all job execution.
• Windows tray support.

Requirements

Common:

• Go 1.22 or newer.

Windows:

• MSYS2 with UCRT64 GCC in C:\msys64\ucrt64\bin.

Linux:

• A C compiler.
• Fyne native build dependencies, including OpenGL/X11 development packages.

On Debian/Ubuntu, the Linux dependencies are typically:

sudo apt install golang gcc libgl1-mesa-dev xorg-dev

Build

Windows:

.\scripts\build-windows.bat

The Windows build is created as a GUI application, so it does not open a terminal window.

The binary is written to:

dist\windows\pysentry.exe

Linux:

chmod +x ./scripts/build-linux.sh
./scripts/build-linux.sh

The binary is written to:

dist/linux/pysentry

Linux using Docker:

chmod +x ./scripts/build-linux-docker.sh
./scripts/build-linux-docker.sh

The binary is copied to:

dist\linux\pysentry

Run From Source

Windows:

$env:Path = 'C:\msys64\ucrt64\bin;' + $env:Path
$env:CGO_ENABLED = '1'
& 'C:\Program Files\Go\bin\go.exe' run ./cmd/pysentry

Linux:

CGO_ENABLED=1 go run ./cmd/pysentry

Storage

PySentry creates its runtime files next to the executable by default.

pysentry.yaml stores application settings:

jobs_dir: .
logs_dir: logs
max_log_files: 100
max_log_age_days: 30
keep_running_in_tray: true
notify_on_failure: true

jobs.yaml stores only job definitions:

jobs:
  - id: 1
    name: Hello scheduler
    folder: Examples
    schedule: '@every 10s'
    command: echo PySentry test job: scheduler is alive
    enabled: true

Command output is written to separate files under logs_dir. File names include the run timestamp and job name, for example:

20260614-224306_Hello_scheduler.log

Schedules

Fast interval schedules:

@every 10s
@every 5m
@every 1h30m

Standard 5-field cron schedules:

*/5 * * * *      every five minutes
0 2 * * *        every day at 02:00
30 9 * * 1-5     weekdays at 09:30

Using The App

1. Start PySentry.
2. Use New job to create a command.
3. Set Schedule, Command, optional Folder, and Enabled.
4. Use Run now for a manual test run.
5. Use Pause to disable one job.
6. Use Pause all as a global stop switch.
7. Open History to see whether a run was Manual, Schedule, or UI.
8. Open Settings to change jobs_dir, logs_dir, and log cleanup limits. Use Browse to choose directories.

Changing jobs_dir saves the current job list to the new directory.

Project Layout

• cmd/pysentry starts the desktop app.
• src/gui contains the GUI.
• src/core contains YAML storage, command execution, scheduling, and log cleanup.
• assets contains app icons that are embedded into the application binary.
• scripts contains build helpers.

Build outputs are written to dist/. The old local bin/ directory is not used.

Dependencies

PySentry keeps the direct dependency list intentionally small:

• fyne.io/fyne/v2 for the native GUI.
• github.com/robfig/cron/v3 for cron schedule parsing.
• gopkg.in/yaml.v3 for YAML settings and jobs.

The remaining entries in go.mod are indirect dependencies pulled by Fyne and the Go module resolver.