Alert when running process finishes

Something like this?

(while kill -0 $pid; do sleep 1; done) && echo "finished"

Replace $pid with the process id and echo "finished" with whatever you want to do when the process exited.

For example:

(while kill -0 $pid; do sleep 1; done) && mail ...

I wrote process_watcher.py

process_watcher --pid 1234 --to [email protected]

Currently, email body looks like:

PID 18851: /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin --writer --splash-pipe=5
Started: Thu, Mar 10 18:33:37 Ended: Thu, Mar 10 18:34:26 (duration 0:00:49)
Memory (current/peak) - Resident: 155,280 / 155,304 kB Virtual: 1,166,968 / 1,188,216 kB

[+] indicates the argument may be specified multiple times, for example:
 process-watcher -p 1234 -p 4258 -c myapp -c "exec\d+" --to [email protected] --to [email protected]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -p PID, --pid PID     process ID(s) to watch [+]
  -c COMMAND_PATTERN, --command COMMAND_PATTERN
                        watch all processes matching the command name. (RegEx pattern) [+]
  -w, --watch-new       watch for new processes that match --command. (run forever)
  --to EMAIL_ADDRESS    email address to send to [+]
  -n, --notify          send DBUS Desktop notification
  -i SECONDS, --interval SECONDS
                        how often to check on processes. (default: 15.0 seconds)
  -q, --quiet           don't print anything to stdout

Ceate a GitHub issue if you need any improvements to it.

I use && to execute a second command when the first is finished successfully. Here some examples:

1. Delete a big folder and beep:

   rm -rv ~/tmp && beep
   

2. Compile a kernel and send an email:

   make && mail -s "Compilation is done" [email protected]
   

Is this a good way to solve your problem? In another case, you can add an || and a third command in case of failure.

Also, an shell script could receive the exit status ($?) of your command, and with if/else and loops you can do whatever you want.