A thing about Tokio, Command and timeouts

content/code/tokio-command-timeout-test.md

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+title = "Timeout With Command in Tokio"
+date = 2023-08-31
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["random", "rust", "tokio", "spawn", "process", "command", "timeout"]
++++
+
+How to spawn an external command and give it a timeout in Rust, with Tokio
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+The entry point for running external applications in Rust is the
+[Command](https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/process/struct.Command.html) structure,
+in the process module. This whole structure is duplicated [on Tokio, with
+async](https://docs.rs/tokio/latest/tokio/process/struct.Command.html).
+
+But there is one thing that exist in other languages (like Python) that Rust
+doesn't have: Having a timeout for the command (and killing it if it runs over
+the timeout). The usual solution is to run the command on a specialized thread
+and, with another thread, make sure to kill the first if the second finishes
+first.
+
+But Tokio have a funcionality that saves a lot of code when dealing with this:
+[timeout](https://docs.rs/tokio/latest/tokio/time/fn.timeout.html). While it
+doesn't apply to the Command itself, it applies to Futures, and waiting for a
+command is an async function, which means it is wrapped around a Future, and we
+can leverage this.
+
+```rust
+use std::time::Duration;
+
+use tokio::process::Command;
+use tokio::time::timeout;
+
+#[tokio::main(flavor = "current_thread")]
+async fn main() {
+    let sleep = "sleep";
+
+    println!("Run 3 secs");
+    let mut cmd = Command::new(&sleep).arg("3s").spawn().unwrap();
+    if let Err(_) = timeout(Duration::from_secs(4), cmd.wait()).await {
+        println!("Got timeout!");
+        cmd.kill().await.unwrap();
+    } else {
+        println!("No timeout");
+    }
+
+    println!("Run 25 secs");
+    let mut cmd = Command::new(&sleep).arg("25s").spawn().unwrap();
+    if let Err(_) = timeout(Duration::from_secs(4), cmd.wait()).await {
+        println!("Got timeout");
+        cmd.kill().await.unwrap();
+    } else {
+        println!("No timeout");
+    }
+}
+```
+
+The thing here is `.wait()`. That's when Tokio wraps the command call into a
+Future. But, because the task is dead, it doesn't actually kill the command,
+and that's why we need to call `.kill()` in case of timeout -- otherwise the
+command will still run (you can check this by removing the `.kill()` call on
+the 25s block, and calling `ps` after the application finishes).
+
+Just note that the `if let Err(_)` is for timeout; `.wait()` also returns a
+`Result`, and that's the one that needs to be checked for the actual success of
+the execution.