I found 2 solutions, both not perfect.
1.Kill all children by kill(-pid) when received SIGTERM signal.
Obviously, this solution can not handle "kill -9", but it do work for most case and very simple because it need not to remember all child processes.
var childProc = require('child_process').spawn('tail', ['-f', '/dev/null'], {stdio:'ignore'});
var counter=0;
setInterval(function(){
console.log('c '+(++counter));
},1000);
if (process.platform.slice(0,3) != 'win') {
function killMeAndChildren() {
/*
* On Linux/Unix(Include Mac OS X), kill (-pid) will kill process group, usually
* the process itself and children.
* On Windows, an JOB object has been applied to current process and children,
* so all children will be terminated if current process dies by anyway.
*/
console.log('kill process group');
process.kill(-process.pid, 'SIGKILL');
}
/*
* When you use "kill pid_of_this_process", this callback will be called
*/
process.on('SIGTERM', function(err){
console.log('SIGTERM');
killMeAndChildren();
});
}
By same way, you can install 'exit' handler like above way if you call process.exit somewhere.
Note: Ctrl+C and sudden crash have automatically been processed by OS to kill process group, so no more here.
2.Use chjj/pty.js to spawn your process with controlling terminal attached.
When you kill current process by anyway even kill -9, all child processes will be automatically killed too (by OS?). I guess that because current process hold another side of the terminal, so if current process dies, the child process will get SIGPIPE so dies.
var pty = require('pty.js');
//var term =
pty.spawn('any_child_process', [/*any arguments*/], {
name: 'xterm-color',
cols: 80,
rows: 30,
cwd: process.cwd(),
env: process.env
});
/*optionally you can install data handler
term.on('data', function(data) {
process.stdout.write(data);
});
term.write(.....);
*/