kickit

A command-line tool to start multiple long-running shell processes - similar to Ruby's Foreman gem but kickit allows you to chain task execution e.g. run grunt dist first then when it has completed run node server.js

Initially based on code from mammal-dev/entry: https://github.com/mammaldev/entry

Install

npm install kickit

Usage

Usage: kickit [options]

Options:

 -h, --help           output usage information
 -V, --version        output the version number
 -c, --config <path>  config file path
 -e, --env <path>     environment file path

Run kickit in a directory, it will either use the config & env you've passed in via options or try and find kickfile.json & .env automatically.

It'll look for kickfile.json in the same way Node require does e.g. start in the cwd and travel up your directory tree, using the first kickfile.json it finds.

It'll only look for a .env file in the current working directory.

See below for env and config file formats.

kickfile.json config file

A json file with an array of process objects, each process object has following values:

• handle: identifier for process
• spawn: object
  • command: command to run
  • args: args for the command
  • env: object, key is env var name, val is value
• waitOn: wait for the process with this handle to finish before running

The following file will run sleep first, when it has completed it will run the cani process and the server process and pass the env vars through to the server

[
  {
    "handle": "sleep",
    "spawn": {
      "command": "sleep",
      "args": [ "1" ]
    },
  },
  {
    "handle": "cani",
    "spawn": {
      "command": "echo",
      "args": [ "'Can I Kick It?'" ]
    },
    "waitOn": "sleep"
  },
  {
    "handle": "server",
    "spawn": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": [ "./test/test_processes/server" ],
      "env": {
        "TESTVAR":  "myTestMessage",
        "DEBUG": "express:*"
      }
    },
    "waitOn": "sleep"
  }
]

.env environment variables file

Simple shell file with export statments, eg:

# ./.env
export EXAMPLE_PORT=3232
export EXAMPLE_HOST='localhost'
export EXAMPLE_ACCESS_KEY='123-456-789'
export EXAMPLE_SECRET="987-654-321"

Debugging

Debug mode

Uses debug, just set the DEBUG env var, eg:

DEBUG=kickit kickit

Long Stack Traces for Promises

Uses bluebird, turn on long stack trace by setting the BLUEBIRD_DEBUG env var to 1, eg:

BLUEBIRD_DEBUG=1 kickit

ToDo

• Modularise code
• Tests

"Can I kick it?"
"Yes you can"