grunt-shell-spawn  

> A fork of [sindresorhus][1]'s [grunt-shell][2] with support for background processes.
>
> (e.g.: start a compass watch in the background)

This plugin lets you:

- Run processes synchronously or asynchronously.
- Process stdout and stderr using functions.
- Run a function when an asynchronous process ends that gets the exit code.
- Kill an asynchronous process.

$3

- node.js 16.x or later
- grunt 1.6 or later

$3

npm install grunt-shell-spawn --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-shell-spawn');

$3

#### Simple task:

Let's take for example launching a compass watch in background:

``javascript
shell: {
command: 'compass watch',
options: {
async: true
}
}
`

#### Multitask:

`javascript
shell: {
compassWatch: {
command: 'compass watch',
options: {
async: true,
execOptions: {
cwd: './src/www/'
}
}
},
coffeeCompile: {
command: 'coffee -b -c -o /out /src',
options: {
async: false,
execOptions: {
cwd: './src/www/'
}
}
},
options: {
stdout: true,
stderr: true,
failOnError: true
}
}
`

#### Custom callbacks:

Works in synchronous or asynchronous mode.

`
asyncWithCallbacks: {
command: 'sleep 3 & echo HELLO & sleep 1 & echo WORLD & sleep 2',
options: {
async: true,
stdout: function(data) { / ... / },
stderr: function(data) { / ... / },
callback: function(exitCode, stdOutStr, stdErrStr, done) {
done();
}
}
},
`

#### Killing an async process

Stop a running async task with the :kill task argument.

`
server: {
command: 'redis-server',
options: {
async: true,
}
},
`

> grunt shell:server shell:somethingElse shell:server:kill

The process will be killed with a SIGKILL.

Please note that processes that are not killed will continue running even after grunt finishes, unless explicitly terminated using :kill. This means it is required to use :kill` to clean up any processes you started, unless you want them to continue running in the background.

Release History

* 2025-03-29 v0.5.0 Updated dependencies (grunt 1.6+, node 16+)
* 2019-05-26 v0.4.1 Updated dependencies
* 2019-01-29 v0.4.0 Added CI on Travis, AppVeyor; updated node.js engine dependency to >=4
* 2019-01-26 v0.3.12 Removed dependency on exec-sync to resolve security advisory
* 2015-01-07 v0.3.1 Fix the :kill task on UNIX and Windows
* 2013-04-06 v0.1.3 Last version with support for grunt 0.3.x

License

MIT License
(c) Sindre Sorhus

[1]: https://github.com/sindresorhus
[2]: https://github.com/sindresorhus/grunt-shell

[cp_spawn]: http://nodejs.org/api/child_process.html#child_process_child_process_spawn_command_args_options