Tools to run a background process command line in windows?

Question

In linux we just need to append a & and that's all.

What for windows?

Answer 1

start /min cmd /c mycommand

If you want to run other jobs in the same shell you have to use powershell background jobs

If you want to hide the command window save a vbscript file with the following code(replacing the commands as needed) :

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") 
WshShell.Run chr(34) & "C:\mycommand_path\mycommand and args" & Chr(34), 0
Set WshShell = Nothing

create a shortcut to this file and run this from the shell directly by double clicking it. It sounds like what you are really after is job control. Install the subsystem for unix to get the bash or ksh prompt and execute it from there if you want job control however it would not suprise me if running it as a background job causes issues. You will probably want to run it as a background process instead.

Answer 2

This is called job control in the *nix world. Job control is a required feature of a POSIX shell.

For Windows, I found this post about some equivalents..

Answer 3

There is no equivalent. You could install cygwin and do the same thing. Or you could make a service that runs your application : srvany or other tools will do this for you. Keep in mind that not all Windows applications will properly run in these ways.

Answer 4

You can use HStart for this purpose, it allow to run a command in background .

Answer 5

Nobody has mentioned start /b:

C:\Users\dandv>help start
Starts a separate window to run a specified program or command.

START ["title"] [/D path] [/I] [/MIN] [/MAX] [/SEPARATE | /SHARED]
      [/LOW | /NORMAL | /HIGH | /REALTIME | /ABOVENORMAL | /BELOWNORMAL]
      [/NODE <NUMA node>] [/AFFINITY <hex affinity mask>] [/WAIT] [/B]
      [command/program] [parameters]

    "title"     Title to display in window title bar.
    path        Starting directory.
    B           Start application without creating a new window. The
                application has ^C handling ignored. Unless the application
                enables ^C processing, ^Break is the only way to interrupt
                the application.