worker

A command line utility for UNIX systems to run programs in the background, while also being able to print out logs, status, stop and restart the processes

This is mostly implemented for myself as a convenient script. I am using libc to be able to fork processes and run them in the background. I cannot guarantee that this is able to always have control of the running processes, and that zombie processes wont happen, so use at your own risk :)

Install

cargo install --git https://github.com/seblj/worker

Setup

To setup, create a .worker.toml in the root of where the projects are located. For example, for one of my projects foodie, a config file can look like this.

NOTE: To get the logs, I am piping stderr and stdout to a file, and a lot of programs are suppressing ansi color codes when it is not a TTY. Because of this, you might not see color in the logs when running a command. Please refer to the docs for the program you are trying to run, to be able to pipe the output with color codes. For example, with Rust, you are able to pass --color always to cargo for it to not suppress the color codes when piping to a file

[[project]]
name = "frontend"
command = "trunk --color always serve"
cwd = "/Users/sebastian/projects/foodie/frontend"
envs = { CARGO_TERM_COLOR = "always" }
display = "Foodie Frontend"

[[project]]
name = "backend"
command = "cargo watch -x 'run --color always'"
cwd = "/Users/sebastian/projects/foodie/backend"
display = "Foodie Backend"

How to run

Usage: worker <COMMAND>

Commands:
  start    Starts the specified project(s). E.g. `worker start foo bar`
  stop     Stops the specified project(s). E.g. `worker stop foo bar`
  restart  Restarts the specified project(s). E.g. `worker restart foo bar` (Same as running stop and then start)
  logs     Print out logs for the specified project. Additionally accepts `-f` to follow the log. E.g. `worker logs foo`
  status   Prints out a status of which projects is running. Accepts no additional flags or project(s)
  list     Prints out a list of available projects to run
  help     Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help  Print help