BRON: a task scheduler for BlackBerry 10

Overview

Bron is a cron-like scheduler for BlackBerry 10. It executes shell scripts or system commands at the time specified by the time spec. It can display a log for your script if the script produces one. It can also create a Notification in your Hub if your script needs to notify you of something important.  And that’s not all….

For the impatient, check out the screen shots!

How it works

Bron reads a filed called ‘brontab’ to learn what it should do. This file is located at:/accounts/1000/shared/misc/bron/conf/. You can view and edit the file within the app, or you can open it in your favourite text editor.

Edit brontab file

The brontab file has three fields which are:

<time spec> : <script name> : <label>

The fields are separated from each other by a colon (:) character. Leading and trailing paces are ignored. Spaces between words are preserved.

the time spec is a cron-like expression that specifies an exact time, or a pattern that a specifies increments of time like “every 4 hours”, or “on the first of the month”.

the script name is the name of a shell script to execute.  scripts must be placed in the /accounts/1000/shared/misc/bron/scripts/ directory. this field should only specify the script name. do not include paths or command line arguments (coming soon in a future update!). Script names should end with a “.sh” suffix. Read more on the Scripts page to learn how to write a log file or create a notification in the Hub.

The label is a unique label that identifies your script. The label is purely for aesthetics – to display a “pretty name” for your scripts. You can use the same command (aka script) multiple times as long as the label is unique.