Run node server in background and start karma from npm script - bash

Question

I'd like to run a node server in background and start karma (on win7). Writing a bash script like the following (and run it with git bash) appears to work, but it reports to a separate window instead of the WebStorm terminal:
#!/bin/bash
node test/server/index.js &
karma start karma.conf.js
package.json
"scripts": {
"test": "test.sh"
},
If I try it with git bash and bash test.sh then it reports to the same window.
I tried to do something similar in npm, but it cannot run background processes.
"scripts": {
"test": "node test/server/index.js & karma start karma.conf.js"
},
No matter how I try it can run things only in a single process, so it waits for the node server to exit, and thus the karma server never starts.
Any idea how to solve the bash reporting to WebStorm terminal or the npm parallelization?
update:
I think I have found the reason: https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/8358 This seems to be a Windows related issue. On Linux it would work properly. So it is not possible to fix the npm script. I think instead of bash I'll move the karma server and the node server to a node script and create a child process for the node server to be Windows compatible. I hope that way the karma logs will show up in the WebStorm terminal.

Answer 1

Cross-platform shell parallelization solution
I had a little time to search more in the topic. Actually there are parallelization tools available for npm and shell scripts, which are cross-platform:
https://github.com/mysticatea/npm-run-all
https://github.com/kimmobrunfeldt/concurrently
https://github.com/royriojas/shell-executor
There was an initiative to merge all of these projects along with others, which was more or less successful: https://github.com/mysticatea/npm-run-all/issues/10. According to one of the contributors npm-run-all is great now, on the other hand the npm-run-all repo does not seem to be that active nowadays, so probably it is better to use concurrently or shell-executor instead.
WebStorm settings / Git bash solution
I set the WebStorm terminal to git bash instead of cmd.exe:
File/Settings > Tools/Terminal > Shell path: "C:\Program Files\Git\bin\bash.exe" > Ok
And I changed the npm script to run with bash:
"scripts": {
"test": "bash -c \"node test/server/index.js & karma start karma.conf.js\""
},
Hopefully the bash commands work the same on Linux too, I have to check with Travis, but there is a very good chance.
Using the bash command for the sh file works too:
"scripts": {
"test": "bash test.sh"
},
Is npm shell configuration a possible solution?
It is interesting that without using the bash command the upper solution did not work. Probably npm started it with cmd.exe and that opened bash.exe in a new window when it checked the header and realized that it is a bash script. And yes, I checked and it uses the cmd.exe by default:
$ npm config ls -l | grep shell
shell = "C:\\Windows\\system32\\cmd.exe"
So another option might be to set the npm shell to git bash and after that I don't have to use the bash in my scripts.
npm config set shell "C:\Program Files\Git\bin\bash.exe"
Well I did exactly that, but nothing changed. I still have to use bash in my scripts and the sh file still opens in a new window. It does not make a real difference, we still need the Webstorm settings to run the script with bash, so it is not a solution.