Are you curious about how launchd works? Want to hack on it? Want something easy to work on that I’d be happy to integrate? Well do I have a fun project for you!

I’ve long wanted to leverage launchd’s flexible configuration file format to express time intervals beyond what good old Unix ‘cron’ supports. Namely, I’d like to see launchd support scheduling jobs based on the phase of the moon, the phase of the solstice/equinox cycle, and the phase of the sun overhead (dawn, sunrise, true noon, sunset, dusk and finally true midnight). Bonus points would be ways to express leap year scheduling constraints and planetary alignment.

The work involved is mostly on the research side to find the algorithms. I’ve been told there are a one or two books out there on the topic (written from a mathematical perspective).

Thanks in advance!