Rule Definition
Calling process.exit() will force the process to exit as quickly as possible even if there are still asynchronous operations pending that have not yet completed fully, including I/O operations to process.stdout and process.stderr. In most situations, it is not actually necessary to call process.exit() explicitly. The Node.js process will exit on its own if there is no additional work pending in the event loop. The process.exitCode property can be set to tell the process which exit code to use when the process exits gracefully.

Remediation
Rather than calling process.exit() directly, the code should set the process.exitCode and allow the process to exit naturally by avoiding scheduling any additional work for the event loop: If it is necessary to terminate the Node.js process due to an error condition, throwing an uncaught error and allowing the process to terminate accordingly is safer than calling process.exit().

Violation Code Sample

if (somethingBadHappened) { 
    console.error("Something bad happened!"); 
    process.exit(1); 
}

Fixed Code Sample

if (somethingBadHappened) { 
    console.error("Something bad happened!"); 
    process.exitCode = 1;
}

CISQ OMG https://nodejs.org/api/process.html#process_process_exit_code http://eslint.org/docs/rules/no-process-exit