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How to make a process wait

I have a code that execute an external program. And now I need that my application wait the end of the execution of that external program.
But I'm not shure how I supposed to do that. I tried some things but don't work.
public Image acquireImage() throws IOException, InterruptedException {
process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd.exe /c start "+ApplicationProperties.getPath()
+ "\\.wimdesktop\\Release\\Static_GenerateGain.exe");
process.waitFor();
System.out.println("EXIT: " + process.exitValue());
return copyImage();
}
The problem is that the System.out.println("EXIT: " + process.exitValue()); print 0 but the external program still running.

You are running cmd.exe and asking it to start a process in the background. So all you are seeing is cmd.exe exit status 0 after it launches your app - and that app may still be running.
If you want waitFor to apply to the sub-process just run the exe directly without the launch wrapper:
process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(ApplicationProperties.getPath()
+ "\\.wimdesktop\\Release\\Static_GenerateGain.exe");
Note that if your EXE depends on environment variables set by CMD.EXE then you may need to try your original command without "start" for background process:
process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd.exe /c "+ApplicationProperties.getPath()
+ "\\.wimdesktop\\Release\\Static_GenerateGain.exe");
In both cases above you may run into second issue that the command freezes, this is because you are not reading the Stdout and error streams. There are many SO posts on how to do this.

How do I abort execution after encountering error?

At the moment I use a simple cmd start command. So:
start ../myexe.exe parameters
As you can see this exe is created from a cpp solution.
When an error occurres I get a pop up like this:
But I actually want this to abort automatically, because it should run in the background totally. Is there a way to run an exe like this? Should I change something in the cpp solution? Or should I write some kind of script to abort the execution?
Another spin of the problem is, that I need to run the exe in a java project. Should I change something here? The implementation so far:
Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c start /B /wait "
+ BASE_PATH
+ "/ciff_caff_parser.exe "
+ caffFullPath + " "
+ caffId
+ " || exit /b");
logger.info("Waiting for parser to finish...");
int i = process.waitFor();
logger.info("Parser finished successfully, with error code: " + i);

process isAlive() awlays return false

I have the following process :
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd.exe /c start "
+file.getAbsolutePath() + "/script.sh");
TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(20);
if(p.isAlive()){
System.out.print("the process still running");
TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(10);
}
The problem is p.isAlive() always return false even though my process is still running (my script shell is still working).
How to fix it?

What do you think the START command does?
Start a program, command or batch script (opens in a new window.)
So, exec(...) starts a process for running cmd.exe, then the start command opens a window and starts a second process for running script.sh, then cmd.exe is done and exists, and the Process identified by p is no longer alive, since that process has ended.
Add /WAIT.
Start application and wait for it to terminate.
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[] {
"cmd.exe", "/c", "start", "/wait",
file.getAbsolutePath() + "/script.sh" });

How to run a batch file of server(which runs forever) and get the control back to the java program without closing that batch

I have a java program:
Process proc = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c callServer.bat");
int exitVal = proc.waitFor();
System.out.println("Process exitValue: " + exitVal);
Which is calling the batch file "callServer.bat":
#echo on
cd bin
call shutdown 2011
call server.bat
This batch file is calling server.bat file which is a server batch file which should run forever during the program. I want to get the control back after starting server.bat to my java program which will do other stuff. Please help me as I have spent so much time on it and could not get any solution.

Could be as simple as running the process in a different thread. This will execute the process in a separate thread and allow your main thread to continue while the batch file runs:
Thread thread = new Thread() {
public void run() {
Process proc = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c callServer.bat");
int exitVal = proc.waitFor();
System.out.println("Process exitValue: " + exitVal);
}
};
thread.start();

You can call the batch file from a separate thread which can be a deamon thread so that it won't exit till all your other user threads have not finished.
hope you find this of any use

You can use the Process.exitValue() function to get the exit value without waiting for the program to close, however that obviously won't work if the program is still running.
If you wanted too you could do something like:
Process proc = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c callServer.bat");
while(condition){
try{
exitVal = proc.exitValue();
System.out.println("Process exitValue: " + exitVal);
}
catch(Exception e){/*do nothing*/}
//other code goes here
}
Kind of ugly, but you could do that if you're not comfortable with threading. But using a thread would be the correct way to do it.

Run bat file in Java and wait

You would think that launching a bat file from Java would be an easy task but no... I have a bat file that does some sql commands for a loop of values read from a text file. It is more or less like this:
FOR /F %%x in (%CD%\listOfThings.txt) do sqlcmd -Slocalhost\MSSQL %1 %2 -d %3 -i %CD%\SQLScripts\\%%x
exit
Don't worry about the specifics they are not important. What i want is to simply run this bat file from within Java and have it wait until execution is finished. Apparently it is not easy. What i have so far is this:
Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /K start SQLScriptsToRun.bat"
+" -U"+getUser()
+" -P"+getPass()
+" " + projectName);
return true;
The problem is that the exec() method returns immediately. The bat file runs for a good 2-3 minutes. I tried removing the start but to no avail. I tried many variations but it got me nowhere. Any ideas on how to do this simple task?

You should not ignore the return value of .exec(). It gives you a Process object that you can waitFor(), like this:
final Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("blahblahblah");
final int exitVal = process.waitFor();
// if exitVal == 0, the command succeeded

you need to use waitFor on the process exec call returns.