Crate powerpack_detach

Provides a way to background a process from an Alfred workflow.

It does this by forking the process and closing the stdin/stdout/stderr file descriptors for the child process. This makes sure Alfred does not block on the process. Calling spawn does the following:

• In the parent:
  • Returns immediately.
• In the child:
  • Detaches the stdin/stdout/stderr file descriptors.
  • Sets up a panic hook that logs an error on panic.
  • Executes the given function.
  • Exit the process.

💡 Note

Depending on your Alfred workflow settings Alfred might execute your workflow many times in a short space of time. It can be useful to make sure only one child process is running at a time by first acquiring a file mutex in the spawned function.

Examples

powerpack::detach::spawn(|| {

    // some expensive operation that shouldn't block Alfred
    //
    // e.g. fetch and cache a remote resource

}).expect("forked child process");

Functions

• spawn
  Execute a function in a child process.