Christopher Posts

Christopher

•Created by Christopher on 8/2/2023 in #help

Run a detached child process in Deno

I'm looking at running a detached child process using Deno. Specifically I want run something like a script or a web server without needing the parent Deno command staying open. In node I can achieve it using spawn doing something like this.

// index.js
const { spawn } = require("child_process");

const childProcess = spawn("run-server", [], {
    detached: true,
    stdio: "ignore",
  });

 childProcess.unref();

// index.js
const { spawn } = require("child_process");

const childProcess = spawn("run-server", [], {
    detached: true,
    stdio: "ignore",
  });

 childProcess.unref();

When the parent node command terminates, the child process will continue running.
In Deno the equivalent would be something like this

// index.ts
const child_process = new Deno.Command("run-server", {
  args: [],
  stdio: "ignore"
}).spawn();

child_process.unref();

// index.ts
const child_process = new Deno.Command("run-server", {
  args: [],
  stdio: "ignore"
}).spawn();

child_process.unref();

In Deno though as soon as unref is called, the parent deno command terminates which then kills the child process. Is there a way using Deno to achieve the equivalent behaviour I can achieve in node?

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