My upstart service is running with the respawn option. I was hoping that if I deploy a new service config, the config will be loaded, when the service respawns. Neither the initctl reload-configuration command forces a reload, nor the restart command. Only an explicit stop and start reloads the configuration.

The problem is, that I can not stop and start the service, at deploy time. The service itself schedules its restart by just shutting down.

Is this behavior by design or am I missing something?

Would it change anything, if I did the respawn with a second watchdog-service by an explicit start if my service stops?

Why is there a difference between an explicit start/stop and the restart command or respawn option.

Thanks.