Gaffa

A cross-platform process manager for procfile based applications in a single terminal. Has an interactive terminal UI.

There are some good Procfile-based process management tools around already:

but they didn't work on the windows machines i have to work on. I do not need a lot of features, just some convenience to run my processes in a single terminal with a single command from my justfile.

A gaffa is someone who manages a group of performers, think of a rock band or circus. Whatever you like. 🧙‍♀️

Features

Cross-platform: Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux without tmux dependency
Process Management: Start, stop, and restart processes individually in interactive mode
Live Monitoring: Process status, uptime, and restart counts
Interactive Mode: Terminal UI with keyboard shortcuts and mouse scrolling

Installation

Available on crates.io: gaffa

cargo install gaffa

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/oryon-dominik/gaffa.git
cd gaffa
cargo build --release

Usage

# Run all processes from Procfile
gaffa run

# Run specific processes
gaffa run web worker

# Interactive mode
gaffa run --interactive

# Log output to a file
gaffa run --log-file log.txt

# Custom Procfile
gaffa run --procfile custom.procfile

# Set environment variables
gaffa run --env PORT=8000 --env PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1

# Load environment from file
gaffa run --env-file .env

# Choose the shell that runs the Procfile command lines
gaffa run --shell bash

# Full command example
gaffa run devserver tailwind --procfile procfile --log-file logs/gaffa.log --env PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1 --interactive

Shell

Each Procfile command line is passed verbatim to a shell — pipes, &&, redirects, and PATH lookups (including .cmd shims like npm on Windows) work exactly as they would when typed into that shell.

Default: pwsh (fallback cmd if PowerShell 7 is not installed) on Windows, sh on Unix. Override with --shell <PROGRAM> or the GAFFA_SHELL environment variable; --shell wins. Known shells (cmd, pwsh, powershell) get their native command flag, everything else is invoked POSIX-style with -c.

Note for Windows: with the pwsh default, command lines are PowerShell code — $VAR inside double quotes is expanded by PowerShell. Use single quotes for literal strings, or --shell cmd for cmd-style lines.

Output Buffering

Some processes buffer their output when not connected to a terminal. To see real-time output: