Specs

start_link(module(), any(), options()) :: on_start()

Starts a GenServer process linked to the current process.

This is often used to start the GenServer as part of a supervision tree.

Once the server is started, the init/1 function of the given module is called with init_arg as its argument to initialize the server. To ensure a synchronized start-up procedure, this function does not return until init/1 has returned.

Note that a GenServer started with start_link/3 is linked to the parent process and will exit in case of crashes from the parent. The GenServer will also exit due to the :normal reasons in case it is configured to trap exits in the init/1 callback.

Options

• :name - used for name registration as described in the "Name registration" section in the documentation for GenServer

• :timeout - if present, the server is allowed to spend the given number of milliseconds initializing or it will be terminated and the start function will return {:error, :timeout}

• :debug - if present, the corresponding function in the :sys module is invoked

• :spawn_opt - if present, its value is passed as options to the underlying process as in Process.spawn/4

• :hibernate_after - if present, the GenServer process awaits any message for the given number of milliseconds and if no message is received, the process goes into hibernation automatically (by calling :proc_lib.hibernate/3).

Return values

If the server is successfully created and initialized, this function returns {:ok, pid}, where pid is the PID of the server. If a process with the specified server name already exists, this function returns {:error, {:already_started, pid}} with the PID of that process.

If the init/1 callback fails with reason, this function returns {:error, reason}. Otherwise, if it returns {:stop, reason} or :ignore, the process is terminated and this function returns {:error, reason} or :ignore, respectively.