Your opinion needed: Should GNU Parallel ignore, kill or wait for background children?

[Ole Tange]

Should GNU Parallel ignore, kill or wait for background children?

Example:

$ parallel '(sleep 100) & echo' ::: 1
1
$ ps -opid,pgrp,cmd
    PID    PGRP CMD
 915719  915719 /bin/bash
 937618  937617 sleep 100
 937620  937620 ps -opid,pgrp,cmd

The sleep is put in the background. The echo finishes, and GNU
Parallel exits, while the sleep is still running.

Is this what you expect?

Or do you expect GNU Parallel to wait for the background job? Should
it do that for every job? Or just when GNU Parallel is about to exit?

Or do you expect GNU Parallel to kill the background job? Should it do
that for every job? Or just when GNU Parallel is about to exit?


/Ole