buzz

Buzz

A Node.js Command Line Program to Keep Your App Running Indefinitely; Like the Program Forever

Buzz is a command line program that can kill your app routinely and restart it. It'll will also restart your app if it dies. It's a lot like the other Node.js program Forever.

It's much simpler than Forever. Approximately 100 lines of JavaScript code. It displays your apps output to STDOUT and also displays any of your apps STDERR output in red.

Motivation

I have a command line app that is nasty to debug. It's working fine for the first five minutes or so. Thus, Buzz was born. Instead of fixing the bug, I wanted to make this. =)

But really, it's utility is that it's a much simpler Forever.

The name comes from Buzz Lightyear in the movie Toy Story. His popular phrase was: To infinity and beyond!

Usage

Install it via npm:

npm install -g buzz

Then run:

buzz 240 your_cool_app param1 param2

The first parameter to buzz is the time in seconds that it'll be killed and restarted. So, your_cool_app would be killed and restarted after four minutes.

If you don't want buzz to kill your app, but you want it to bring it back to life if it dies, run:

buzz your_cool_app param1 param2

You can test buzz by running his the app buzz_test:

./bin/buzz_test

buzz_test runs the app smarty_pants that spews out random facts to you and taunts you. Occasionally smarty_pants will commit suicide, but buzz will bring him back to life.

buzz_test ends up actualy just running the following command:

buzz 10 smarty_pants 2000 0.15

Which will kill smarty pants every 10 seconds and bring him back to life. Also, every two seconds, smarty pants will spit out a random fact. Approximately, every 13 seconds smarty pants will take his own life, but Buzz will bring him back.

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2011-2013 JP Richardson

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.