Install ppss with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• ppss

Project history

Louwrentius developed PPSS as the Parallel Processing Shell Script to apply one command independently to many input items. The project initially lived on Google Code and was later migrated to GitHub with its wiki.

Distributed processing arrived in the 2.x line. Multiple hosts could divide a common item queue while communicating through an SSH server. The repository now labels the project unmaintained.

Adoption history

PPSS moved from Google Code to GitHub together with its wiki. It was packaged by Homebrew, but upstream now explicitly states that the project is no longer developed or maintained.

How it is used

Users give PPSS either a directory or a text file of work items plus a command containing the item placeholder. PPSS chooses a worker count from the available processors unless the user supplies an explicit job limit.

Suitable workloads are independent per-item tasks such as compression, transcoding, downloading, or image conversion. The -C option accepts a user-selected configuration file, but upstream does not document a conventional configuration pathname.

Distributed mode lets several Unix-like hosts consume parts of one queue through an SSH server. Users should account for the project's unmaintained status when choosing it for new automation.

Why package nerds care

PPSS represents an older, deliberately small Unix-tool approach to multicore and distributed work: a Bash script turns a directory or text file into a bounded job queue without introducing a large scheduler.

Its combination of automatic CPU detection, per-item status logging, restart support, and optional coordination through a shared SSH host made it more ambitious than a simple background-process loop, while retaining shell-level transparency.

Timeline

• 2009: Copyright notices in the upstream script identify the early PPSS development period.
• 2.0 era: PPSS added distributed processing through an SSH-coordinated queue.
• Later: The project and its wiki moved from Google Code to GitHub.
• Current: Upstream marks PPSS as no longer maintained.

Related projects

• GNU Parallel addresses the same command-parallelization problem with a maintained, extensively documented command-line interface.

Sources

• https://github.com/louwrentius/PPSS
• https://github.com/louwrentius/PPSS#readme
• source_facts.package-manager