Process Control Script

procctrl can be used to start a process, and later stop it, by referencing it symbolically instead of by process id. Additionally, a "parent" process can be monitored and the spawned process killed when that parent terminates.

This is typically used for integration test harnesses using, for example, Maven or Ant. If a server process required for the test can be started using this utility then it will be killed whenever the parent build/test process terminates. This avoids the problem of rogue processes remaining after failed or aborted builds/tests.

The XML fragment below is an example of how this can be used as part of a test sequence.

<property name="procctrl.cmd" value="procctrl"/>
<property name="test.server.id" value="IntegrationTestServer"/>
<target name="pre-integration-test">
<exec executable="${procctrl.cmd}">
<arg value="-k${test.server.id}"/>
<arg value="-p"/>
<arg value="start"/>
<arg value="run-my-server-command"/>
<arg value="my-server-parameter"/>
</exec>
</target>
<target name="post-integration-test">
<exec executable="${procctrl.cmd}">
<arg value="-k${test.server.id}"/>
<arg value="stop"/>
</exec>
</target>
<target name="integration-test-run">
<!-- run the test, requiring the server process to be running -->
</target>
<target name="integration-test" depends="pre-integration-test, integration-test-run, post-integration-test"/>

The integration-test target in the above example starts an external server process needed by the test and makes sure it terminates afterwards. The k parameter specifies a logical name for the server process that is used to identify the process when it must be stopped after the test.

If the test fails and the Ant process terminates before the post-integration-test target is reached then the p parameter will ensure that the server process gets killed as Ant terminates.

To build from source on Linux, or similar, platforms use the following in the top-level directory (that is, the one containing this file).

• aclocal
• autoheader
• autoconf
• automake --add-missing
• ./configure
• make check

To install the procctrl utility, use make install instead of make check. This must typically be run as root to write to the system folders.

To build from source on Windows, there is a Visual Studio solution file. This has been tested with Visual Studio Express 2013 and contains configurations for both 32- and 64- bit architectures. A POM.XML file is provided which will work with the Maven Native Packaging tool to manage dependencies and publish a binary to the Maven repository for any other projects using Maven for dependency management that require access to this component.