The right way to run external process in .NET (async version)

ProcessAsyncHelper.cs

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

public static class ProcessAsyncHelper
{
    public static async Task<ProcessResult> ExecuteShellCommand(string command, string arguments, int timeout)
    {
        var result = new ProcessResult();

        using (var process = new Process())
        {
            // If you run bash-script on Linux it is possible that ExitCode can be 255.
            // To fix it you can try to add '#!/bin/bash' header to the script.

            process.StartInfo.FileName = command;
            process.StartInfo.Arguments = arguments;
            process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
            process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;
            process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
            process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
            process.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;

            var outputBuilder = new StringBuilder();
            var outputCloseEvent = new TaskCompletionSource<bool>();

            process.OutputDataReceived += (s, e) =>
                                            {
                                                // The output stream has been closed i.e. the process has terminated
                                                if (e.Data == null)
                                                {
                                                    outputCloseEvent.SetResult(true);
                                                }
                                                else
                                                {
                                                    outputBuilder.AppendLine(e.Data);
                                                }
                                            };

            var errorBuilder = new StringBuilder();
            var errorCloseEvent = new TaskCompletionSource<bool>();

            process.ErrorDataReceived += (s, e) =>
                                            {
                                                // The error stream has been closed i.e. the process has terminated
                                                if (e.Data == null)
                                                {
                                                    errorCloseEvent.SetResult(true);
                                                }
                                                else
                                                {
                                                    errorBuilder.AppendLine(e.Data);
                                                }
                                            };

            bool isStarted;

            try
            {
                isStarted = process.Start();
            }
            catch (Exception error)
            {
                // Usually it occurs when an executable file is not found or is not executable

                result.Completed = true;
                result.ExitCode = -1;
                result.Output = error.Message;

                isStarted = false;
            }

            if (isStarted)
            {
                // Reads the output stream first and then waits because deadlocks are possible
                process.BeginOutputReadLine();
                process.BeginErrorReadLine();

                // Creates task to wait for process exit using timeout
                var waitForExit = WaitForExitAsync(process, timeout);

                // Create task to wait for process exit and closing all output streams
                var processTask = Task.WhenAll(waitForExit, outputCloseEvent.Task, errorCloseEvent.Task);

                // Waits process completion and then checks it was not completed by timeout
                if (await Task.WhenAny(Task.Delay(timeout), processTask) == processTask && waitForExit.Result)
                {
                    result.Completed = true;
                    result.ExitCode = process.ExitCode;

                    // Adds process output if it was completed with error
                    if (process.ExitCode != 0)
                    {
                        result.Output = $"{outputBuilder}{errorBuilder}";
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    try
                    {
                        // Kill hung process
                        process.Kill();
                    }
                    catch
                    {
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        return result;
    }


    private static Task<bool> WaitForExitAsync(Process process, int timeout)
    {
        return Task.Run(() => process.WaitForExit(timeout));
    }


    public struct ProcessResult
    {
        public bool Completed;
        public int? ExitCode;
        public string Output;
    }
}

Great, thank you for sharing this! It has saved me a ton of time and frustration.

Can I run multiple processes in parallel with this, and how would I go by doing so in that case?

Line 33 & 49 should be a comparation to null (e.Data == null) and not string.IsNullOrEmpty(e.Data).
Otherwise if the process outputs an empty linefeed, SetResult ist called twice which throws an exception.

its great

Line 33 & 49 should be a comparation to null (e.Data == null) and not string.IsNullOrEmpty(e.Data).
Otherwise if the process outputs an empty linefeed, SetResult ist called twice which throws an exception.

your right!!

I created a slightly improved version, which among other things fixes the bugs described by @svenso
https://gist.github.com/georg-jung/3a8703946075d56423e418ea76212745

Спасиба for sharing this! I was looking for something similar and this is just what I wanna do :)

holy hell! Thank you

I made a generic one which can accept any ProcessStartInfo objet and with or without timeout: https://gist.github.com/Indigo744/b5f3bd50df4b179651c876416bf70d0a

I also took some improvements from the various answer from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/470256/process-waitforexit-asynchronously

private static Task<bool> WaitForExitAsync(Process process, int timeout)
{
    return Task.Run(() => process.WaitForExit(timeout));
}

You are still tying up a (background) thread, defeating the purpose of this being async in the first place.

Try something like this:

    public static async Task WaitForExitAsync(this Process process, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)
    {
        var tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<bool>(TaskCreationOptions.RunContinuationsAsynchronously);

        void Process_Exited(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
             tcs.TrySetResult(true);
        }

        process.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
        process.Exited += Process_Exited;

        try
        {
            if (process.HasExited)
            {
                return;
            }

            using (cancellationToken.Register(() => tcs.TrySetCanceled()))
            {
                await tcs.Task.ConfigureAwait(false);
            }
        }
        finally
        {
            process.Exited -= Process_Exited;
        }
    } 

Thanks @davidathompson, I've updated my fork accordingly : https://gist.github.com/Indigo744/b5f3bd50df4b179651c876416bf70d0a (actually my Task.run() were really useless).

@Indigo744 thanks for that, but if you don't call WaitForExit on linux, it might create zombie processes.

Now maybe process.Exited do it under the hood, but I am not sure so I would advise to at least call it.

Just a FYI, there's also this tiny library: https://github.com/adamralph/simple-exec

Can I run multiple processes in parallel with this, and how would I go by doing so in that case?

No, Stringbuilder isn't thread-safe. But you can always just build the strings yourself.

The fact that the stdout and stderr reads are using a TaskCancellationSource and the end is waiting on those makes this async process thread-safe.

I've created a modified version. It includes some improvements and bug fixes. See the gist first comment for details.
https://gist.github.com/tazlord/496e16698d4c4f90ea674dc2fdeb964a

I created a modified version of this too some years ago but I'd nowadays recommend also taking a look at https://github.com/Tyrrrz/CliWrap. It's a great library for async process execution and provides some quite smart features and API surface 👍🏻

Thanks. I saw all of the other versions in this thread. I also saw the library. It’s definitely very cool but sometimes all you need is a very lightweight function instead of adding an entire library to your project. My version was an attempt at meeting that goal.

Sure, you're definitely right about that. I just remember that, after investing some time in getting multiple subtleties right, found it harder to do it "right" than I originally thought it would be - and that I also didn't find CliWrap right away. Thus I decided to put the link here for reference :)

I fully agree that it's often better to rely on some easy to maintain piece of code instead of taking a dependency though. I guess it depends quite much on the specific scenario in this case.

what license is this under?