processkit-kotlin

Native Kotlin/JVM child-process management built on Kotlin coroutines: whole-tree kill-on-close (no orphaned subprocesses) via Windows Job Objects, Linux cgroup v2 (with a POSIX process-group fallback), and POSIX process groups on macOS/BSD — plus run-and-capture, line streaming (Flow), shell-free pipelines, readiness probes, timeouts & structured-concurrency cancellation, and supervision.

A native sibling in the processkit family (Rust · Go · C# · Python · F# · Kotlin) — its own JVM backend, not a binding. The Rust crate is the reference; this port mirrors its behaviour.

Status: early development. Run-and-capture (Command + the capture verbs) works today on Windows and Linux; the rest of the surface — streaming, pipelines, readiness probes, supervision, resource limits — is landing incrementally, and macOS support is on the way. Track progress in ROADMAP.md.

Quick start

import net.zelanton.processkit.Command

suspend fun main() {
    // Capture the result; a non-zero exit is data, not an exception.
    val head = Command("git", "rev-parse", "HEAD").outputString()
    println("${head.stdout.trim()}  (exit ${head.exitCode})")

    // Require success and get trimmed stdout directly.
    println(Command("git", "--version").run())
}

Every run is contained in its own kill-on-close tree, so a timeout or a dropped coroutine never leaks the process — or anything it spawned. Inject a ProcessRunner (e.g. ScriptedRunner) to unit-test code that shells out with no subprocess.

Requirements

JDK 25+. processkit binds platform APIs through the Foreign Function & Memory API, so run with --enable-native-access=ALL-UNNAMED. Supported today: Windows (Job Object) and Linux (cgroup v2 / process group); macOS is planned.

Building & testing

./gradlew build on any host (JDK 25 toolchain, provisioned automatically). The containment backend is platform-specific, so the suite runs on two hosts: natively on Windows/JVM (the Job Object path) and in a Linux container for the cgroup v2 / POSIX process-group paths —

bash scripts/test-docker.sh     # or: pwsh ./scripts/test-docker.ps1

No Linux machine needed (works with Docker / Rancher Desktop). CI runs the full Linux/Windows/macOS matrix. See CONTRIBUTING.md.