concurrently

What is concurrently?

The 'concurrently' npm package is a utility that allows you to run multiple commands concurrently. It is often used to run multiple processes during development, such as a server and a client application at the same time. It can handle the output of these processes, terminate them all together, and more.

What are concurrently's main functionalities?

Running multiple commands

This feature allows you to run multiple commands at the same time. Each command is quoted and separated by a space.

concurrently "command1 arg" "command2 arg"

Customizing the prefix for command output

This feature allows you to customize the prefix shown in the output for each command. In this example, 'API' and 'UI' are custom prefixes for the two npm scripts.

concurrently --names "API,UI" "npm:api" "npm:start"

Killing all commands when one of them exits

This feature ensures that if one command exits, all other commands are also terminated. This is useful for cleaning up processes if one fails.

concurrently --kill-others "command1" "command2"

Running commands sequentially

This feature allows you to run commands sequentially instead of concurrently. The --success option determines which command's exit code will be used as the exit code for concurrently.

concurrently "command1" "command2" --success first

Other packages similar to concurrently

npm-run-all

A CLI tool to run multiple npm-scripts in parallel or sequential. It is similar to concurrently but specifically designed for npm scripts. It provides a simpler interface for running scripts in series or parallel.

pm2

PM2 is a production process manager for Node.js applications with a built-in load balancer. It is more feature-rich than concurrently, providing a daemon process that helps keep applications alive forever, facilitates common system admin tasks, and can be used in production environments.

foreman

Foreman is a manager for Procfile-based applications. Its focus is on easing the development of applications by allowing you to run multiple processes with a single command. It is not limited to Node.js and can be used with any language or markup.

README

Concurrently

Version: 2.2.0 (previous stable)

Run multiple commands concurrently. Like npm run watch-js & npm run watch-less but better.

Features:

• Cross platform, works also in Windows
• Output is easy to follow with prefixes
• With --kill-others switch, all commands are killed if one dies
• Spawns commands with spawn-default-shell

Install

The tool is written in Node.js, but you can use it to run any commands.

npm install -g concurrently

or if you are using it from npm scripts:

npm install concurrently --save

Usage

Remember to surround separate commands with quotes, like this:

concurrently "command1 arg" "command2 arg"

Otherwise concurrently would try to run 4 separate commands: command1, arg, command2, arg.

In package.json, escape quotes:

"start": "concurrently \"command1 arg\" \"command2 arg\"

Help:

Usage: concurrently [options] <command ...>

Options:

  -h, --help                        output usage information
  -V, --version                     output the version number
  -k, --kill-others                 kill other processes if one exits or dies
  --no-color                        disable colors from logging
  --names                           names different processes, i.e --names "web,api,hot-server" to be used in the prefix switch
  -p, --prefix <prefix>             prefix used in logging for each process.
  Possible values: index, pid, time, command, name, none or a template. Default: index. Example template "{time}-{pid}"

  -tf, --timestamp-format <format>  specify the timestamp in moment format. Default: YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss.SSS

  -r, --raw                         output only raw output of processes, disables prettifying and concurrently coloring
  -s, --success <first|last|all>    Return exit code of zero or one based on the success or failure of the "first" child to terminate, the "last" child, or succeed  only if "all" child processes succeed. Default: all

  -l, --prefix-length <length>      limit how many characters of the command is displayed in prefix.
  The option can be used to shorten long commands.
  Works only if prefix is set to "command". Default: 10


Examples:

 - Kill other processes if one exits or dies

     $ concurrently --kill-others "grunt watch" "http-server"

 - Output nothing more than stdout+stderr of child processes

     $ concurrently --raw "npm run watch-less" "npm run watch-js"

 - Normal output but without colors e.g. when logging to file

     $ concurrently --no-color "grunt watch" "http-server" > log

 - Custom prefix

     $ concurrently --prefix "{time}-{pid}" "grunt watch" "http-server"

For more details, visit https://github.com/kimmobrunfeldt/concurrently

FAQ

• Process exited with code null?

  From Node child_process documentation, exit event:

  This event is emitted after the child process ends. If the process terminated normally, code is the final exit code of the process, otherwise null. If the process terminated due to receipt of a signal, signal is the string name of the signal, otherwise null.

  So null means the process didn't terminate normally. This will make concurrent to return non-zero exit code too.

Why

I like task automation with npm but the usual way to run multiple commands concurrently is npm run watch-js & npm run watch-css. That's fine but it's hard to keep on track of different outputs. Also if one process fails, others still keep running and you won't even notice the difference.

Another option would be to just run all commands in separate terminals. I got tired of opening terminals and made concurrently.

NPM Issue

Previously I thought this could fix some problems I had with watching scripts and this readme said:

When running watch or serve tasks, I'd recommend to use --kill-others option:

concurrently --kill-others "npm run watch-js" "npm run watch-less"

That way, if for some reason e.g. your watch-less died, you would notice it easier.

However NPM didn't work as I hoped it would. See this issue.