# circus-tent/circus

A Process & Socket Manager built with zmq

Repository: https://github.com/circus-tent/circus
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/circus
Homepage: http://circus.readthedocs.org/
Language: Python
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Last push: 2025-02-10T22:49:04+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 26/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 6, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5321, "days_push": 569, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1578, forks 260 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:06.692628+00:00)

## What it is
Circus is a Python-based process and socket manager built on ZeroMQ that can run, watch, and control multiple processes and sockets. It can be used both as a library and through a command-line tool.

## Use cases
- manage and supervise multiple long-running processes
- watch and restart processes that crash
- manage sockets shared across worker processes
- control processes remotely via a zmq-based API
- replace supervisord for process management
- run and monitor worker pools from the command line

## When to choose
- you need programmatic process supervision in Python
- you want to share sockets across multiple worker processes
- you prefer a ZeroMQ-based control API over supervisord's XML-RPC
- you need both a library and CLI for process management

## When to avoid
- you need full init-system or container orchestration features
- you want a modern web UI for process management
- you only need simple systemd-style service management on Linux
- you require active community development with frequent releases

## Facets
- artifact type: framework
- maturity: maintenance
- function: monitoring, middleware, cli, developer-tools
- domain: backend, developer-tools
- platform: python, cross-platform, cli
- tags: process-manager, process-supervision, zmq, socket-management, supervisor, devops, automation, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- circus-tent/circus (main) score 26

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:06.692628+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T03:56:55.050082+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/circus-tent/circus (fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:06.692628+00:00, sha 85ee8841b5d7)
  - registry_pypi: https://pypi.org/pypi/circus/json (fetched 2026-08-29T11:27:53.552365+00:00, sha b6dd16c7a287)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.