childminder

childminder is a promise based child process manager for development.

import { Childminder } from 'childminder';

const cm = new Childminder();
const child = cm.create('echo', ['Hello, world'], {
  prefix: 'greeting',
  prefixColor: 12,
});

child.restart();

Features

• Colorful console prefix
• Preserve child process console message color
• Handle multiple processes

Motivation

nodemon is a useful tool in node.js server programming. It watches file changes and restarts node.js process automatically. If we use transpilers like Babel, CoffeeScript or TypeScript, however, process should not restart when file changes but when transpilation is completed. Maybe in this case, we should monitor events from transpiler and reload process manually.

childminder is yet another tool for development like nodemon, but does not watch file changes. When using childminder, you should call childminder process restart function manually, which looks cumbersome but indeed is a clear way.

API

Class: Childminder

Process manager that contains multiple Child instances.

Childminder#create(command[, args][, options]) => Child

Create Child instance.

• command String The command to run
• args Array List of string arguments
• options Object
  • cwd String Current working directory of the child process
  • env Object Environment key-value pairs
  • prefix String stdout message prefix
  • prefixColor Number Prefix xTerm colors
  • stdout stream.Writable Child's stdout stream (Default: process.stdout)
  • lazy Boolean If true, Child process does not start running when created (Default: false)
• returns Child instance.

Class: Child

Thin wrapper of node.js ChildProcess object, which supports restart. Child instance is created by Childminder#create method.

Child#startOrRestart() => Promise<void>

Starts or restarts child process. Returned promise is resolved when the previous process exits and new process gets started.

Child#restart() => Promise<void>

Restarts running child process. Returned promise is resolved when the previous process exits and new process gets started.

Child#waitForExit() => Promise<void>

Wait for child process to terminate. Returned promise is resolved when the process exits.

Child#isRunning() => boolean

Returns if the child process is running.

Child#kill(signal = 'SIGHUP') => Promise<void>

Kill child process and wait for it to terminate. Returned promise is resolved when the process exits.

License

MIT