<<../_v2_banner.md>>
Component instances progress through four major lifecycle events: create, start, stop, and destroy.
Component instances may retain isolated persistent state on a storage medium while they are not running which helps them maintain the illusion of continuity across restarts.
When a component instance is created, the component frameworks assigns a unique identity to the instance, adds it to the component topology, and makes its capabilities available for other components to use.
Once created, a component instance can then be started or destroyed.
Starting a component instance loads and runs the component's program and provides it access to the capabilities that it requires.
Every component runs for a reason. The component framework only starts a component instance when it has work to do, such as when another component requests to use its instance's capabilities.
Once started, a component instance continues to run until it is stopped.
Stopping a component instance terminates the component's program but preserves its persistent state so that it can continue where it left off when subsequently restarted.
The component framework may stop a component instance for a variety of reasons, such as:
A component can implement a lifecycle handler (example) to be notified of its impending termination and other events on a best effort basis. Note that a component can be terminated involuntarily and without notice in circumstances such as resource exhaustion, crashes, or power failure.
Components can stop themselves by exiting. The means by which a component exits depend on the runner that runs the component.
Once stopped, a component instance can then be restarted or destroyed.
Destroying a component instance permanently deletes all of its associated state and releases the system resources it consumed.
Once destroyed, a component instance ceases to exist and cannot be restarted. New instances of the same component can still be created but they will each have their own identity and state distinct from all prior instances.
Component manifests let you mark a child as eager, which causes component manager to implicitly bind to that child when any component binds to the parent. In other words, this causes the child to be immediately started whenever the parent is started. This is a legacy feature, and additional uses should be limited to tests. The future of this feature is being tracked at fxb/61721.
eager primarily has two uses, to start the first component, and as a convenience in tests to run components without having to explicitly bind to them.
If the eager child fails to start for any reason (such as a missing component), component manager exhibits the following behavior:
