[erlang-questions] can a program launched with open_port({spawn, Cmd}, Options) remain running after the port closes?

[Tim Watson]

Hi Erik,

On 27 Sep 2012, at 03:20, Erik Søe Sørensen wrote:
> It is the responsibility of the port program to shut down when stdin reaches EOF.
> This behaviour/expectation confused me too at some point, but it probably has its merits: not all software is designed for "let it crash", so simply killing the port program might be too crude in some circumstances.
> 
Well that's fine, but it should be documented a bit more clearly IMHO. Also the port program, in this instance, is another beam emulator, so it's clearly *not* going to behave that way! Currently the connected process for the port has 3 shutdown modes:

1. rpc:call(Node, custom_app, stop, [])
2. close_port(Port)
3. open_port({spawn, "kill -9 " ++ OsPid, Opts)

Item 3 is the least preferable as it is not portable (relies on 'kill' being a shell built-in, etc) and requires that the os process id is known. It sounds like (2) is not a workable solution unless the external program is hand written to deal with 'stdin reaches EOF'. This is less than ideal, as it means that open_port/2 is not much use for spawning (and monitoring thereafter) arbitrary programs unless you're willing to live with the fact that you're not able to shut them down by closing the port. 




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