Catch Errors in Protractor Runner - node.js

Question

Is there a way to catch specific errors thrown directly by protractor's runner? For example, one uncaught exception is:
WARNING - pattern /var/www/smoran/repo/app/partials/app/app.controller.e2e.js did not match any files.
[launcher] Process exited with error code 1
/var/www/smoran/repo/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:126
throw e;
^
Error: Spec patterns did not match any files.
at Runner.run (/var/www/smoran/repo/node_modules/protractor/lib/runner.js:249:11)
at TaskRunner.run (/var/www/smoran/repo/node_modules/protractor/lib/taskRunner.js:123:19)
at createNextTaskRunner (/var/www/smoran/repo/node_modules/protractor/lib/launcher.js:220:20)
at /var/www/smoran/repo/node_modules/protractor/lib/launcher.js:243:7
at _fulfilled (/var/www/smoran/repo/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:797:54)
at self.promiseDispatch.done (/var/www/smoran/repo/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:826:30)
at Promise.promise.promiseDispatch (/var/www/smoran/repo/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:759:13)
at /var/www/smoran/repo/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:573:44
at flush (/var/www/smoran/repo/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/q/q.js:108:17)
at process._tickCallback (node.js:419:13)
This error is thrown when protractor can not find any files using the globbing pattern specified or, possibly, when none of the files it finds that do exist can be parsed by jasmine or mocha.
Now, I do not care about the situation that causes this error. I do not care whether protractor can or can not find files with my globbing patterns, and if I do care, I would like to throw my own error(s), as its errors are much too verbose, being in fact uncaught exceptions. Unfortunately, protractor is tripping me up at every turn where I try to do that. It seems to be throwing the error in the runner, then catching it in its dependency, q, then rethrowing it if it is being run under NodeJS (which it is).
I am using gulp, and I am using child_process's spawn to spawn protractor, because all of gulp's protractor plugins seem to be blacklisted or advised not to be used. My code would be too long to show here, but it essentially ends up like this:
gulp.task('protractor', function() {
return spawn('protractor',
[
'--specs=' + notFoundTests
otherArgs
],
{
stdio: 'inherit'
});
});
I have protractor in my PATH, and notFoundTests is a string, not an array. I am using stdio: 'inherit' because I still want to see all the errors & output, but I am trying to find a way to filter it.
No matter what I try to catch, the error seems to not be emitted that way. It seems that it is not emitted as an error, so spawn(...).on('error', function() {}); does not work. Using a try catch block around the call to spawn also does not work. Even using process.on('uncaughtException'); does not catch it, even though it seems to be an uncaught exception.
My question is: How do I catch errors like this, that are thrown by protractor but not really returned? Does protractor provide any hooks, etc.? Also, why is it throwing this particular error? This seems to be an end-developer error, not something that protractor should handle itself.