terminate

Terminate a Node.js Process based on the Process ID

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tl;dr

Research

Background Reading

• How to terminate node processes: https://github.com/joyent/node/issues/1172 (history lesson)
• nodejs exec command failing with no useful error message: https://github.com/joyent/node/issues/4590

Useful StackOverflow Questions/Answers

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26694100/why-does-my-node-app-process-keep-getting-stopped-when-i-use-forever
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18275809/kill-all-child-process-when-node-process-is-killed
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26004519/why-doesnt-my-node-js-process-terminate-once-all-listeners-have-been-removed
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14319724/nodejs-exec-command-failing-with-no-useful-error-message
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9275654/how-many-child-processes-can-a-node-js-cluster-spawn-on-a-64bit-wintel-pc

Background / Motivation

While building the Faster module we decided to use Child Process(es) to run the application we are observing.
As a result, we need to be able to kill those processes in order to re-start the app.

Why not use an Existing Module?

We investigated using terminate: https://github.com/indexzero/terminate/ it was un-maintained and had no tests so we submitted an issue offering to update the module with tests.
Charlie replied welcoming an update so we submitted a Pull Request with 100% test coverage

Other potential modules:

• nexpect: https://github.com/nodejitsu/nexpect
• node-ps: https://github.com/neekey/ps (has basic tests but no cov)
• tree-kill: https://www.npmjs.com/package/tree-kill (no tests!!)

Name

Terminate seemed like the best (of the available) name,
if you have a better suggestion, please share!