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Getting Started

This guide takes you from zero to a running multi-process dev environment.

Prerequisites​

  • Node.js ≥ 18
  • An existing Node.js project (dev-process-manager drops into any project)

1. Install​

npm install dev-process-manager

The binary is called dev-pm. A short alias makes day-to-day use nicer:

alias dpm="npm exec -- dev-pm"

Add it to your shell profile (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, …) to make it permanent. The rest of this documentation uses dpm, but you can always run the binary directly with npx dev-pm.

3. Create a config file​

Add a dev-pm.config.ts file to your project root. It lists every process dev-process-manager should manage:

dev-pm.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from "dev-process-manager";

export default defineConfig({
    scripts: [
        {
            name: "api",
            script: "npm run start:api",
            waitOn: ["tcp:5432"], // wait for Postgres first
        },
        {
            name: "admin",
            script: "npm run start:admin",
        },
    ],
});

Other supported config file extensions are ts, mts, cts, js, mjs, cjs and json. See the Configuration reference for every available option.

4. Start your processes​

Start everything:

dpm start all

Or start a single process by name:

dpm start api

The daemon starts automatically the first time you run a command.

5. Watch what is happening​

dpm status          # list running processes
dpm logs            # tail logs of all running processes
dpm logs api        # tail logs of a single process

6. Stop when you are done​

dpm stop all        # stop processes
dpm shutdown        # stop everything and shut down the daemon

Next steps​