https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25247250

gistfile1.js

#!/usr/bin/env node

"use strict";

console.log("This is pid " + process.pid);

setTimeout(function () {
    process.on("exit", function () {
        require("child_process").spawn(process.argv.shift(), process.argv, {
            cwd: process.cwd(),
            detached : true,
            stdio: "inherit"
        });
    });
    process.exit();
}, 5000);

This was so helpful! It got me 99% of what I needed. I want to just comment my use case and how it differed a little bit in case it helps someone else. My script was to be run in the terminal and get input from the user. If they chose a certain option, I would do some work, and then need to restart the script so the work would be reflected correctly, but it would need to continue getting user input on the restarted process (which was the tricky part for me to get right).

It (getting user input from keyboard) finally started working as expected when I DIDN'T explicitly do a process.exit() after spawning the child process.

const inquirer = require('inquirer');
const childProcess = require('child_process');

inquirer.prompt([makePromptOptions('Hello There')])
.then(response => {
  if (response.answer === 'restart') {
    //perform some updating code here

    childProcess.spawn(process.argv.shift(), process.argv, {
      cwd: process.cwd(),
      detached: true,
      stdio: 'inherit'
    });
    // process.exit(0);  <-- doing a process.exit() here was messing up user input on the child_process. commenting it out make input work as expected.
  } else {
    console.log('Not doing the new process. Finishing here.');
  }
});

function makePromptOptions(message) {
  return {
    type: 'list',
    name: 'answer',
    message,
    choices: [
      {
        value: 'restart',
        name: 'Have this script automatically update and restart itself!'
      },
      {
        value: 'continue',
        name: 'Continue without updating'
      }
    ]
  };
}

I wonder if there could be a way to restart the process and have it still accept user input properly. It seems a bit sloppy to leave dead processes around doing nothing.

Only this one solution allow helped me to prevent memory leak in nodejs, argh! Thank you!