How to exit/close/kill dev server

[Jaarson]

Hi!

Sometimes vite dev server hangs 😑 OK, not a big deal, but the port is already taken and starting new server assigns a new port number.
How can I kill dev server, so I can restart it and keep using my preferred port?

[Jaarson]

OK, just figured it out. In terminal:

ps -ax | grep vite

then using PID number and -9 for force kill

kill -9 <PID>

[Enet4]

I stumbled upon this because I was having trouble taking down a Vite dev server in an Sbt task. The Vite Dev server is a bit finicky, and may stay alive even after killing the parent process. That is, if you start vite with something like this (or an equivalent program in a different programming language):

import cp from 'node:child_process';

console.log("Spawning Vite Dev server...");

const p = cp.exec('npx vite');
p.stdout.pipe(process.stdout);
p.stderr.pipe(process.stderr);

console.log("Shutting down in 5 seconds");
await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 5000));

console.log("Shutting down Vite Dev server...");
p.kill();

Calling kill won't destroy the server worker process. Not even trying to use the terminal UI by sending "q\n" to stdin will make a difference.

The only way that allowed me to have full control of the dev server's lifetime was to spawn a custom script which uses the Vite API directly and actively detects whether it should stop. For instance, if I want this server to live for as long as there is another server listening on local port 9000:

import { createServer } from 'vite';
import net from 'node:net';
import url from 'node:url';

console.log("Spawning Vite Dev server...");

const server = await createServer();
await server.listen(5173);
server.printUrls();

const checkPlayServer = async () => {
    // check if the server is still alive
    let socket = net.connect({
        port: 9000,
        host: 'localhost',
    });

    socket.on('error', async (err) => {
        console.log("Closing Vite Dev server");
        socket.destroy();
        await server.close();
    })

    socket.on('connect', () => {
        socket.end();
        // connection still OK, resuming pinging
        setTimeout(checkPlayServer, 2_500);
    })
};

setTimeout(checkPlayServer, 2_500);

[Shadow7101]

just use this command:
npx kill-port 5173

[lokka30]

npx vite then q + enter worked for me

[LarsKemmann]

➜ press h + enter to show help
h

Shortcuts
press r + enter to restart the server
press u + enter to show server url
press o + enter to open in browser
press c + enter to clear console
press q + enter to quit

For anyone else who finds this and wonders what other commands are supported. 😊