- looks like the debug() invocations don't hurt runtime terribly, so leave them in - devise something appraching an actual severity level scheme for the debug messages   instead of just random numbers while coding them in - ++comments ++sorting - remove commented out backoff stuff, as the exec-fd harness seems to have solved   that, as well as solved my "always have one pending child left over".   tl;dr - messages *were* being lost or not sent somehow; exec-fd hugely reduces   contention/overhead on the fifo, evidently enough to ensmoothen things. - add in polite exec-fd closures, despite them not impacting much at all (they're   in &'d processes so they don't pass that fd setup on to anything else.
- looks like the debug() invocations don't hurt runtime terribly, so leave them in
- devise something appraching an actual severity level scheme for the debug messages
  instead of just random numbers while coding them in
- ++comments ++sorting
- remove commented out backoff stuff, as the exec-fd harness seems to have solved
  that, as well as solved my "always have one pending child left over".
  tl;dr - messages *were* being lost or not sent somehow; exec-fd hugely reduces
  contention/overhead on the fifo, evidently enough to ensmoothen things.
- add in polite exec-fd closures, despite them not impacting much at all (they're
  in &'d processes so they don't pass that fd setup on to anything else.

jrrs/sh