Services and states

A Service has:

• a command: one command line, run in your login shell ($SHELL -l -c "…"), so your PATH, version managers and profile apply. Pipes, && and $VARIABLES work as in a terminal. On Windows itself it runs in cmd.exe;
• a working directory inside the Project (the Project folder by default);
• an optional Port. The command gets the actual port as $PORT (%PORT% in cmd), e.g. next dev -p $PORT, and the Service counts as Running once that port accepts connections. Without a Port it counts as Running after about 1.5 seconds;
• an optional URL for Open in Browser (⇧⌘O). Its port follows the actual port;
• Starts after: its Dependencies. Starting the Service starts them first and waits until they are Running, or have Exited for one-off steps such as migrations;
• Manual: Start All skips it, unless something being started depends on it.

Changes apply the next time a Service starts. A running Service whose configuration changed shows “Restart to apply”; nothing restarts on its own.

States

A Service is always in one of six states:

State	Meaning
Stopped	Not running: never started, or you stopped it.
Starting	Waiting for its Dependencies, or launched and not up yet.
Running	Up: its Port accepts connections (or it has been alive ~1.5 s).
Stopping	Asked to stop; waiting for every process it started to end.
Exited	Ended on its own with exit code 0.
Failed	Ended on its own with an error, or couldn’t start. The reason and the last lines of output are shown.

Dependencies

Starting a Service starts its Dependencies first. Start All goes in dependency order, Stop All in reverse. Stopping or restarting one Service leaves the Services that depend on it alone. If a Dependency fails, the Services waiting for it don’t start, and say why.

Stopping

Stopping sends Ctrl-C (SIGINT) to the Service’s whole process group, then SIGTERM after 5 seconds, then SIGKILL, so nothing is left running in the background. On Windows itself it sends Ctrl-Break, then ends every process the Service started. The log says when a stop had to be forced.

If localhost itself crashes, the next launch finds the Services still running from that session and asks whether to stop them.