| # foreground-child |
| |
| Run a child as if it's the foreground process. Give it stdio. Exit |
| when it exits. |
| |
| Mostly this module is here to support some use cases around |
| wrapping child processes for test coverage and such. But it's |
| also generally useful any time you want one program to execute |
| another as if it's the "main" process, for example, if a program |
| takes a `--cmd` argument to execute in some way. |
| |
| ## USAGE |
| |
| ```js |
| import { foregroundChild } from 'foreground-child' |
| // hybrid module, this also works: |
| // const { foregroundChild } = require('foreground-child') |
| |
| // cats out this file |
| const child = foregroundChild('cat', [__filename]) |
| |
| // At this point, it's best to just do nothing else. |
| // return or whatever. |
| // If the child gets a signal, or just exits, then this |
| // parent process will exit in the same way. |
| ``` |
| |
| You can provide custom spawn options by passing an object after |
| the program and arguments: |
| |
| ```js |
| const child = foregroundChild(`cat ${__filename}`, { shell: true }) |
| ``` |
| |
| A callback can optionally be provided, if you want to perform an |
| action before your foreground-child exits: |
| |
| ```js |
| const child = foregroundChild('cat', [__filename], spawnOptions, () => { |
| doSomeActions() |
| }) |
| ``` |
| |
| The callback can return a Promise in order to perform |
| asynchronous actions. If the callback does not return a promise, |
| then it must complete its actions within a single JavaScript |
| tick. |
| |
| ```js |
| const child = foregroundChild('cat', [__filename], async () => { |
| await doSomeAsyncActions() |
| }) |
| ``` |
| |
| If the callback throws or rejects, then it will be unhandled, and |
| node will exit in error. |
| |
| If the callback returns a string value, then that will be used as |
| the signal to exit the parent process. If it returns a number, |
| then that number will be used as the parent exit status code. If |
| it returns boolean `false`, then the parent process will not be |
| terminated. If it returns `undefined`, then it will exit with the |
| same signal/code as the child process. |
| |
| ## Caveats |
| |
| The "normal" standard IO file descriptors (0, 1, and 2 for stdin, |
| stdout, and stderr respectively) are shared with the child process. |
| Additionally, if there is an IPC channel set up in the parent, then |
| messages are proxied to the child on file descriptor 3. |
| |
| In Node, it's possible to also map arbitrary file descriptors |
| into a child process. In these cases, foreground-child will not |
| map the file descriptors into the child. If file descriptors 0, |
| 1, or 2 are used for the IPC channel, then strange behavior may |
| happen (like printing IPC messages to stderr, for example). |
| |
| Note that a SIGKILL will always kill the parent process, but |
| will not proxy the signal to the child process, because SIGKILL |
| cannot be caught. In order to address this, a special "watchdog" |
| child process is spawned which will send a SIGKILL to the child |
| process if it does not terminate within half a second after the |
| watchdog receives a SIGHUP due to its parent terminating. |
| |
| On Windows, issuing a `process.kill(process.pid, signal)` with a |
| fatal termination signal may cause the process to exit with a `1` |
| status code rather than reporting the signal properly. This |
| module tries to do the right thing, but on Windows systems, you |
| may see that incorrect result. There is as far as I'm aware no |
| workaround for this. |
| |
| ## util: `foreground-child/proxy-signals` |
| |
| If you just want to proxy the signals to a child process that the |
| main process receives, you can use the `proxy-signals` export |
| from this package. |
| |
| ```js |
| import { proxySignals } from 'foreground-child/proxy-signals' |
| |
| const childProcess = spawn('command', ['some', 'args']) |
| proxySignals(childProcess) |
| ``` |
| |
| Now, any fatal signal received by the current process will be |
| proxied to the child process. |
| |
| It doesn't go in the other direction; ie, signals sent to the |
| child process will not affect the parent. For that, listen to the |
| child `exit` or `close` events, and handle them appropriately. |
| |
| ## util: `foreground-child/watchdog` |
| |
| If you are spawning a child process, and want to ensure that it |
| isn't left dangling if the parent process exits, you can use the |
| watchdog utility exported by this module. |
| |
| ```js |
| import { watchdog } from 'foreground-child/watchdog' |
| |
| const childProcess = spawn('command', ['some', 'args']) |
| const watchdogProcess = watchdog(childProcess) |
| |
| // watchdogProcess is a reference to the process monitoring the |
| // parent and child. There's usually no reason to do anything |
| // with it, as it's silent and will terminate |
| // automatically when it's no longer needed. |
| ``` |