Manage the life of a spawned process in go

kill.go

// Start a process:
cmd := exec.Command("sleep", "5")
if err := cmd.Start(); err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

// Wait for the process to finish or kill it after a timeout (whichever happens first):
done := make(chan error, 1)
go func() {
    done <- cmd.Wait()
}()
select {
case <-time.After(3 * time.Second):
    if err := cmd.Process.Kill(); err != nil {
        log.Fatal("failed to kill process: ", err)
    }
    log.Println("process killed as timeout reached")
case err := <-done:
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalf("process finished with error = %v", err)
    }
    log.Print("process finished successfully")
}