node.jswinapiprocesssignals

Why can I not kill my child process in nodejs on windows?

exec = require('child_process').exec;

child = exec('node child.js');
child.stdout.pipe(process.stdout);
child.kill('SIGKILL');

function wait() {
    setTimeout(wait, 1000);
    child.kill('SIGKILL');
}
wait();

The above code does not work. The child starts and will continue to write output indefinitely. I can not figure out how to kill this child process. I am running node v0.11.9 in Windows 7. I know that Windows does not use POSIX signals but sending it 'WM_QUIT' results in an exception. Is my best solution to setup an event protocol on stdin?

Solution

  • This still doesn't work for me with the current accepted answer. A work around on windows you can use is to call upon the windows taskkill program to kill the child process for you. Not quite as nice but it works. When you spawn the child you get a ProcessID (pid) stored in the child object returned when spawning, you can use with taskkill to kill the process.

    var spawn = require('child_process').spawn;    
spawn("taskkill", ["/pid", child.pid, '/f', '/t']);