Method: Process.detach

Defined in:

process.c

.detach(pid) ⇒ Object

Avoids the potential for a child process to become a zombie process. Process.detach prevents this by setting up a separate Ruby thread whose sole job is to reap the status of the process pid when it terminates.

This method is needed only when the parent process will never wait for the child process.

This example does not reap the second child process; that process appears as a zombie in the process status (ps) output:

pid = Process.spawn('ruby', '-e', 'exit 13') # => 312691
sleep(1)
# Find zombies.
system("ps -ho pid,state -p #{pid}")

Output:

312716 Z

This example also does not reap the second child process, but it does detach the process so that it does not become a zombie:

pid = Process.spawn('ruby', '-e', 'exit 13') # => 313213
thread = Process.detach(pid)
sleep(1)
# => #<Process::Waiter:0x00007f038f48b838 run>
system("ps -ho pid,state -p #{pid}")        # Finds no zombies.

The waiting thread can return the pid of the detached child process:

thread.join.pid                       # => 313262

# File 'process.c', line 1603

static VALUE
proc_detach(VALUE obj, VALUE pid)
{
    return rb_detach_process(NUM2PIDT(pid));
}