Buzz is a command line program that can kill your app routinely and restart it. It'll will also restart your app if it dies. It's a lot like the other Node.js program Forever.
It's much simpler than Forever. Approximately 50 lines of CoffeeScript code. It displays your apps output to STDOUT and also displays any of your apps STDERR output in red.
Usage
Install it via npm: npm install buzz
Then run: buzz 240 your_cool_app param1 param2
The first parameter to buzz is the time in seconds that it'll be killed and restarted. So, `your_cool_app` would be killed and restarted after four minutes.
If you don't want buzz to kill your app, but you want it to bring it
back to life if it dies, run: buzz your_cool_app param1 param2
You can test buzz by running his the app `buzz_test`: buzz_test
`buzz_test` runs the app `smarty_pants` that spews out random facts to you and taunts you. Occasionally `smarty_pants` will commit suicide, but buzz will bring him back to life.
`buzz_test` ends up actualy just running the following command:
buzz 10 smarty_pants 2000 0.15
Which will kill smarty pants every 10 seconds and bring him back to life. Also, every two seconds, smarty pants will spit out a random fact. Approximately, every 13 seconds smarty pants will take his own life, but Buzz will bring him back.
Motivation
I have a command line app that is nasty to debug. It's working fine for the first five minutes or so. Thus, Buzz was born. Instead of fixing the bug, I wanted to make this. =)
But really, it's utility is that it's a much simpler Forever.
The name comes from Buzz Lightyear in the movie Toy Story. His popular phrase was: To infinity and beyond!
If you made it this far, you should follow me on Twitter.
-JP
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