fq 0.4.0 — macOS, Linux and Windows

The same command line everywhere, with a per-platform implementation behind it:

	macOS	Linux	Windows
Enumeration	lsappinfo (the apps the Force Quit dialog shows), osascript fallback	/proc scan of the graphical session, wmctrl -lpx alternative	tasklist (windowed processes), PowerShell alternative
Kill	SIGKILL to the process group	SIGKILL to the process group, or to the process tree	taskkill /T /F
Sleep (-s)	pmset sleepnow	systemctl suspend	SetSuspendState

Install

• macOS and Linuxbrew — brew install topce/fq/fq (builds from this tag)
• macOS, Linux — opam install fq, or build from source: dune build
• Arch Linux — fq in the AUR
• Windows — build from source with a native OCaml ≥ 5.1 and opam 2.2+
  (dune build, then _build\default\bin\main.exe)

No prebuilt archives are attached to this release: Homebrew, opam and the AUR
build from this tag's source. See docs/RELEASING.md for how the optional
archives and the Scoop/WinGet manifests are produced and published.

Verification

macOS (arm64) has the full suite green — unit tests, the -s/--sleep end-to-end
checks, the platform checks against a fixture /proc tree — plus the real
lsappinfo backend. The Linux and Windows code paths are covered by
fixture-driven end-to-end tests (a synthetic /proc tree whose pids are live
processes for the Linux kill path; stub taskkill for the Windows one) and by
the unit tests, but this release has not been run on real Linux or Windows
hardware by the maintainer yet. Please report anything that misbehaves.

What changed

[0.4.0] - 2026-09-16

Added

• Linux support. Applications are enumerated from /proc: a process is an
  application when it runs in a graphical session (DISPLAY/WAYLAND_DISPLAY),
  does not belong to a terminal (it is neither a shell nor the job a terminal
  is running in the foreground — an application started with app & or
  detached from its terminal counts) and is not session infrastructure (window
  manager, compositors, panels, session/sound daemons, portals, input methods).
  Helper
  processes of a multi-process application run the application's own binary and
  are folded into it, and applications are named after their .desktop entry
  when there is one. Victims are killed as a process group, or — for a process
  that does not lead its own group — as a whole process tree read from /proc.
  -b wmctrl lists the windows on screen instead (X11).
• Windows support. Applications are enumerated with tasklist /V (windowed
  processes; the image name without .exe), with PowerShell Get-Process as
  the alternative backend. Victims are terminated with taskkill /PID <pid> /T /F, helpers included. The process tree is read once with PowerShell for
  the "this terminal is never killed" logic.
• Platform-specific sleep commands: systemctl suspend (with pm-suspend and
  zzz as fallbacks) on Linux and SetSuspendState('Suspend') (with
  rundll32 as a fallback) on Windows. On Windows the detached helper that
  guarantees the sleep when the terminal itself is force-quit is a hidden,
  detached PowerShell script.
• Platform-specific protected system applications: the session shell, window
  managers and session daemons on Linux; Explorer, the desktop window manager
  and the core session processes on Windows.
• -b/--backend accepts the backends of the running platform only, and an
  unsupported platform is refused with a clear message instead of failing
  somewhere deeper.
• The help text, prompts and messages are platform-aware ("put the Mac to
  sleep", "put the computer to sleep", "put the PC to sleep").
• Packaging for every channel: packaging/ renders the Homebrew, Scoop,
  WinGet, AUR and nfpm manifests from a SHA256SUMS file, and
  docs/RELEASING.md is the release runbook (tagging, the package managers,
  building the optional archives by hand, canary stage, verification,
  rollback, monitoring).
• Test hooks for driving the non-native code paths anywhere: FQ_PLATFORM,
  FQ_ENUM_OUTPUT, FQ_PROC_ROOT and FQ_DESKTOP_DIRS (documented in the
  README), plus test/test_platforms.sh, which exercises the Linux backend
  and its real kill path against a synthetic /proc tree.

Changed

• A failed force-quit now always exits 1. Previously the exit status was only
  turned into 1 by -s/--sleep; without it, a force-quit that failed (a
  permission error, say) reported the failure but exited 0, contradicting the
  documented exit status.
• FQ_APPS_FILE is read directly instead of with cat, so the test hooks work
  on Windows too.

fq 0.3.1

fq 0.3.1

Bug-fix release. fq -y -o -s no longer kills fq's own process group — the
"self process" — so it reliably keeps the terminal running and still puts the
Mac to sleep.

Fixed

• --others no longer kills fq's own process group. If an application in the
  list led fq's process group (so it was not an ancestor), fq treated it as a
  victim and sent SIGKILL to the whole group, taking itself down with it; the
  requested -s/--sleep then never happened. The process-group leader is now
  treated as self by --others, and force_quit_pid never signals fq's own
  process group or pid, so the sleep (and anything else still to do) always
  runs.
• With no other application to quit, fq -o -y -s still puts the Mac to sleep.

Tests

• test/test_sleep.sh covers the self-process case: fq is placed in a process
  group led by a non-ancestor application and -o -y -s must leave that
  application running and still put the Mac to sleep.
• test/test_fq.ml checks that a force-quit refuses fq's own pid.

Install

brew install topce/fq/fq

Note: an unrelated message broker is also published as fq in homebrew-core,
so use the fully qualified brew install topce/fq/fq.

Full changelog: https://github.com/topce/fq/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md

v0.3.0

Fixed

• -s/--sleep is no longer skipped when there is nothing to force-quit. Every
  mode that found zero victims exited before reaching the sleep code, so
  fq -o -y -s — the natural "quit everything else, then sleep" command —
  silently did nothing at all when every other application was protected or
  the application running the terminal was the only one left. The sleep is now
  a step of its own that every mode reaches; with nothing to quit and without
  -y, fq asks about the sleep alone ("Put the Mac to sleep? [y/N]") instead
  of asking to force-quit zero applications.
• The sleep is no longer asked for twice: the combined "force quit … and put
  the Mac to sleep?" confirmation now covers the sleep, so a single y both
  quits and sleeps. This was still broken when naming an application on the
  command line (fq -s Safari), which asked a second time after the first y
  and then treated the second, unanswered prompt as a decline — so the Mac was
  never put to sleep.

Added

• FQ_SLEEP_CMD overrides the program used to put the Mac to sleep, and
  FQ_APPS_FILE (pid name lines) overrides application enumeration. Both
  exist so the test suite can exercise the real code paths without touching
  running applications or actually sleeping the machine.

Tests

• test/test_sleep.sh covers the sleep behaviour end to end, driven through
  the built executable with a synthetic application list and a stub sleep
  command: nothing-to-quit still sleeps (including a machine with no
  applications at all), one confirmation never asks twice (for --others,
  --pid, and a named application alike), a declined confirmation never
  sleeps, and a refused protected application exits 1 without sleeping.