tasks

Tasks -- Better Process Manager for Ruby

spawn

tasks provides spawn even in ruby 1.8.

require 'tasks'
include Tasks

pid = spawn './something.rb'
...
system "kill #{pid}"

spawn is like system with '&' and it also returns the procces id.

love_pact

tasks supports a couple to do a love pact.

require 'tasks'
include Tasks

master_pid = spawn './master.rb'
slave_pid = spawn './slave.rb'

fork do
  love_pact master_pid, slave_pid
end

If a master died, the slave dies immediately.

Note that now love_pact works only in UNIX.