Icod.Processes

Icod.Processes is a cross-platform .NET library for safe child-process execution and neutral process-control primitives. It provides reusable process mechanisms without tying callers to a command suite such as CoreUtils or ProcPs.

The library is the standalone successor to the process infrastructure that was originally incubated under Icod.CommandFramework.Processes.

Features

• exact argument-vector child launching without shell quoting;
• explicit inherited, empty, and modified child environments;
• executable lookup using explicit working-directory and environment snapshots;
• asynchronous standard-input, standard-output, and standard-error forwarding;
• captured output with concurrent draining of both output streams;
• monotonic execution timeouts through Icod.Timing;
• cancellation policies for the child, process tree, or leave-running behavior;
• process identities with optional PID-reuse protection;
• process, process-group, session, and POSIX priority-selector targets;
• arbitrary-process liveness observation and asynchronous waiting;
• portable signal parsing and translation, including Linux real-time signals;
• signal delivery with controlled platform substitutions;
• Linux signal disposition and blocked-mask observations;
• POSIX queued signal delivery for individual processes;
• POSIX nice-value operations and Windows priority-class substitutions;
• POSIX launch-time signal disposition/mask policy; and
• atomic POSIX child process-group creation when the native launch path is used.

Requirements

The initial 1.0.0 release targets .NET 10.0. The implementation uses process launch capabilities provided by the .NET 10 runtime and intentionally does not add compatibility shims for older target frameworks.

The only runtime package dependency is Icod.Timing 1.0.0.

Installation

Install-Package Icod.Processes -Version 1.0.0

or:

dotnet add package Icod.Processes --version 1.0.0

Example

using Icod.Processes;

var options = new ProcessRunOptions( "dotnet" ) {
	CaptureStandardOutput = true,
	ResolveExecutable = true,
	ReturnLaunchFailureResult = true,
	Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds( 10 )
};
options.Arguments.Add( "--version" );

ProcessResult result = await ProcessRunner.RunAsync( options );
Console.WriteLine( result.StandardOutput );

A larger runnable example is available under samples/Icod.Processes.Sample.

Platform capabilities

Icod.Processes exposes neutral contracts, but not every operating system has the same native process-control facilities. Providers report unsupported operations explicitly rather than fabricating Unix semantics.

Capability	Windows	Linux	macOS
Child execution, streams, environment, and working directory	Yes	Yes	Yes
Process identity, PID-reuse observation, liveness, and waiting	Yes	Yes	Yes
New process group at child launch	Yes	Yes	Yes
Custom native argv[0]	Unsupported	Yes	Yes
Process-group target control	Unsupported	Yes	Yes
Signal delivery	Termination substitution	Native	Native
Signal disposition observation	Unsupported	Yes	Unsupported
Blocked-signal observation	Unsupported	Yes	Unsupported
Queued signal values	Unsupported	Yes	Unsupported
Priority operations	Priority-class approximation	Native nice values	Native nice values

Applications should inspect provider capabilities and operation results where a feature can vary by host.

Migrating from Icod.CommandFramework.Processes

Code that currently consumes the process layer from Icod.CommandFramework can migrate without taking a dependency on ProcPs or CoreUtils.

Replace the package dependency with:

<PackageReference Include="Icod.Processes" Version="1.0.0" />

and replace:

using Icod.CommandFramework.Processes;

with:

using Icod.Processes;

The standalone package owns the neutral process execution and control contracts. ProcPs-specific enumeration, /proc parsing, metrics, matching, personalities, and presentation remain outside this library.

Design boundary

Icod.Processes owns general process execution and control mechanisms. It does not own ProcPs-specific process enumeration, /proc field parsing, selection grammar, metrics, personalities, or command presentation. Those remain in Icod.ProcPs.Shared.

Likewise, command-line parsing, diagnostics, and other command-hosting concerns remain outside this package.

Building

On Windows:

build.cmd

On Unix-like hosts:

./build.sh

Both scripts support clean, restore, build, test, and pack. With no argument they run the complete sequence.

CI builds and tests on Windows, Ubuntu, and macOS. Publishing from main packs and publishes the NuGet package after all three platform jobs succeed.

Author

Timothy J. Bruce uniblab@hotmail.com

Copyright (c) 2026 Timothy J. Bruce.

License

Licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 or later (LGPL-3.0-or-later). See LICENSE for the complete license text.