Api suggestion: API.App.restart

[peters]

Support for restarting the application. It should restart with the same invocation flags it was started with in the first place. This would be great when it comes to auto-updating.

Want to back this issue? Post a bounty on it! We accept bounties via Bountysource.

[Ivshti]

Can't you just refresh the page?

document.location.reload(true)

[peters]

Sure, you could do that. But what if the application holds an exclusive lock on a file you are going to update? What if you want to replace the chromium binary blob itself?

[ibdknox]

+1

[zcbenz]

I'll implement App.restart() after #64 is done.

[twrodriguez]

+1

[tommoor]

Any thoughts / priority on this restart API? Would be great.

[javichi]

+1 for a clean restart function

[adampetrie]

Any updates on this feature?

[schme16]

+1 for this!

[rhiokim]

+1 It would be nice to auto update applications.

[tommoor]

This feature would be helpful when doing updates, as you can provide the user with a button to restart the application instead of asking them to close and reopen.

[semmel]

It is a real nuisance to do this with shell scripts. Since after you've spawned the script you'll have to wait until the app process terminates.
And it is hard to do right path parameter sanitising (e.g. spaces). Not to mention Unicode text which I believe is not supported on Windows, or is it?
The Windows shell script:

@echo off
rem usage: relaunch_app.bat <seconds to wait> <executable to launch> <arguments>
rem i.e. $>relaunch_app.bat 5 "C:\Program Files\Jujusoft\JujuEdit\JujuEdit.exe" "C:\Windows\system.ini"

echo Restarting in %1 seconds...
title Waiting

rem Windows 7
@timeout /t %1 /nobreak >nul 2>&1

rem Windows XP
if errorlevel 1 ping 192.0.2.2 -n 1 -w %1000 > nul

rem # launch the executable via start command
start /B "" %2 %3 %4

And on Mac:

echo "Please wait for ${1} seconds.."
sleep $1
open -n -a "${2}" --args $3

In your node-webkit app:

child_process.spawn(path.join(process.cwd(), "relaunch_app.bat")
    , [waitSecs.toString()
        , (process.platform == "darwin") ? process.execPath.match(/^([^\0]+?\.app)\//)[1] 
                                        : process.execPath
    ]    
    , {detached: true}
);