tree-kill

What is tree-kill?

The tree-kill npm package is used to kill all processes in the process tree, including the root process. It is particularly useful when you need to clean up all child processes spawned by a parent process, ensuring that no orphan processes remain running.

What are tree-kill's main functionalities?

Kill process trees on different platforms

This code kills the process tree with the PID 12345 on both Windows and Unix systems.

const treeKill = require('tree-kill');
treeKill(12345);

Kill process trees with a specific signal

This code sends the SIGKILL signal to the process tree with the PID 12345, forcing it to terminate immediately.

const treeKill = require('tree-kill');
treeKill(12345, 'SIGKILL');

Kill process trees with a callback

This code attempts to terminate the process tree with the PID 12345 using the SIGTERM signal and provides a callback to handle the result.

const treeKill = require('tree-kill');
treeKill(12345, 'SIGTERM', function(err) {
  if (err) {
    console.error('Error:', err);
  } else {
    console.log('Process tree terminated successfully.');
  }
});

Other packages similar to tree-kill

ps-tree

The ps-tree package is similar to tree-kill in that it allows you to list all child processes of a given PID. However, it does not provide a built-in method to kill these processes; you would need to implement that functionality yourself.

fkill

fkill is a more feature-rich process killer that can kill processes by name, port, and more. It also supports killing processes across platforms but does not specifically target the entire process tree like tree-kill does.

pidtree

pidtree is another package that can list child processes of a given PID. Similar to ps-tree, it does not have the capability to kill the processes, which is the main feature of tree-kill.

README

Tree Kill

Kill all processes in the process tree, including the root process.

Examples

Kill all the descendent processes of the process with pid 1, including the process with pid 1 itself:

var kill = require('tree-kill');
kill(1);

Send a signal other than SIGTERM.:

var kill = require('tree-kill');
kill(1, 'SIGKILL');

Run a callback when done killing the processes. Passes an error argument if there was an error.

var kill = require('tree-kill');
kill(1, 'SIGKILL', function(err) {
    // Do things
});

You can also install tree-kill globally and use it as a command:

tree-kill 1          # sends SIGTERM to process 1 and its descendents
tree-kill 1 SIGTERM  # same
tree-kill 1 SIGKILL  # sends KILL instead of TERMINATE

Methods

require('tree-kill')(pid, [signal], [callback]);

Sends signal signal to all children processes of the process with pid pid, including pid. Signal defaults to SIGTERM.

For Linux, this uses ps -o pid --no-headers --ppid PID to find the parent pids of PID.

For Darwin/OSX, this uses pgrep -P PID to find the parent pids of PID.

For Windows, this uses 'taskkill /pid PID /T /F' to kill the process tree. Note that on Windows, sending the different kinds of POSIX signals is not possible.

Install

With npm do:

npm install tree-kill

License

MIT

Changelog

[1.2.2] - 2019-12-11

Changed

• security fix: sanitize pid parameter to fix arbitrary code execution vulnerability

[1.2.1] - 2018-11-05

Changed

• added missing LICENSE file
• updated TypeScript definitions

[1.2.0] - 2017-09-19

Added

• TypeScript definitions

Changed

• kill(pid, callback) works. Before you had to use kill(pid, signal, callback)

[1.1.0] - 2016-05-13

Added

• A tree-kill CLI

[1.0.0] - 2015-09-17

Added

• optional callback
• Darwin support