Procman

Procman is process manager for local development on macOS.

Install:

go install github.com/croaky/procman@latest

Define your processes in Procfile.dev. For example:

clock: bundle exec ruby schedule/clock.rb
esbuild: npm run buildwatch
queues: bundle exec ruby queues/poll.rb
web: bundle exec puma -p 3000 -C ./config/puma.rb

Run processes by naming them in a comma-delimited list:

procman esbuild,web

You must list at least one process. There are no options or flags.

The output from multiple processes will be combined. For example:

esbuild |
esbuild | > buildwatch
esbuild | > node build.mjs --watch
esbuild |
esbuild | watching...
web     | [67296] Puma starting in cluster mode...
web     | [67296] * Puma version: 6.4.2 (ruby 3.3.0-p0) ("The Eagle of Durango")
web     | [67296] *  Min threads: 12
web     | [67296] *  Max threads: 12
web     | [67296] *  Environment: development
web     | [67296] *   Master PID: 67296
web     | [67296] *      Workers: 2
web     | [67296] *     Restarts: (✔) hot (✖) phased
web     | [67296] * Preloading application
web     | [67296] * Listening on http://0.0.0.0:3000
web     | [67296] Use Ctrl-C to stop
web     | [67296] - Worker 1 (PID: 67331) booted in 0.9s, phase: 0
web     | [67296] - Worker 0 (PID: 67330) booted in 0.9s, phase: 0

procman will run its processes until it receives a SIGINT (Ctrl+C), SIGTERM, or SIGHUP.

If one of the processes finishes, it will send a SIGINT to all remaining running processes wait 5s, and then send a SIGKILL all remaining processes.

Prior art

Procman was forked from Hivemind, which was inspired by Foreman.

Differences between Procman, Hivemind, and Foreman?

• Procman is for macOS only; Hivemind and Foreman support Linux.
• Procman expects processes to be defined in Procfile.dev; Hivemind and Foreman are agnostic about the file name and location.
• Procman runs only one process per process type; Foreman supports multiple processes per process type (e.g. web=1,worker=2).
• Procman runs the processes in Procfile.dev "as-is"; Hivemind loads environment variables from .env before running.
• Procman is distributed via its Go source; Hivemind and Foreman can be installed via Homebrew package or Ruby gem.
• Procman depends on github.com/creack/pty for a PTY interface; Hivemind depends on github.com/pkg/term.

Why create Procman?

• I had been using another process manager and the app was feeling sluggish. I wondered if something purpose-built for my app would feel better.
• I wanted to learn more about macOS test runners on GitHub Actions, testing with Go, Unix pipes, concurrency, mutexes, signal handling, etc.

Author

Dan Croak (@croaky)

License

Procman is licensed under the MIT license.

See LICENSE for the full license text.