Re: [boost] [interprocess][process] Synchronizing libraries and efforts (+ bugs)

From: Boris (boriss_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-08-31 14:01:11

On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:23:30 +0200, Ion Gaztañaga <igaztanaga_at_[hidden]>  
wrote:

Hi Ion,

> I recently needed s library to launch processes and I took a look to the  
> recently announced Process 0.2  
> (http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2008/07/139322.php).

I'm currently working on Boost.Process 0.3. After having released version  
0.2 I had learnt that there was another version of Boost.Process somewhere  
in Subversion which was more recent than version 0.1 which I had used to  
create 0.2. With Boost.Process 0.3 all changes in all snapshots will be  
merged again.

> [...]A process-launching library is a very nice utility for Interprocess  
> and
> I was thinking of adding this possibility for a future version (Boost  
> 1.37 or 1.38) of the library. If Boost.Process is going forward, it  
> would be glad to collaborate and develop a library that can satisfy all  
> our needs and plays nicely with Interprocess.

Sure! I had picked up Boost.Process myself which was created in a Google  
Summer of Project in 2006 by someone else.

> [...]2) Ability to redirect child process stdin/stdout/stderr to  
> /dev/null, to share the stdin/stdout of the parent or to redirect it to  
> a file. And in the latter case, append or overwrite options  
> (Boost.Process implements some of this options). I slightly modified  
> Boost.Process to implement a rought version of file redirection.

This is already supported in Boost.Process 0.3.

> [...]5) I don't know if streams are the right way to communicate with  
> processes, because they don't offer non-blocking support.

I had added a method to access a file handle in version 0.2 I think. That  
way it's possible to use asynchronous I/O (you need Boost.Asio 1.1 at  
least; I think this version supports I/O objects for file descriptors the  
first time). There is no example yet but asynchronous I/O works as far as  
I can tell.

> 6) I think that process-launching interface should be similar to the  
> soon to be standardized C++ futures.

I'm not sure to what you are referring (do you have a link?). However the  
Launcher concept is replaced by a Context concept in 0.3. This was a  
change in Subversion by whoever was doing the changes there (with 0.3 I'm  
really trying to get one version of Boost.Process again without making any  
other changes).

> So I'm interested in a process-launching library and I offer my  
> collaboration in case Boost.Process development needs help.

Can you wait two weeks? :) I should be done with version 0.3 until mid  
September. I'm nearly done going through the source code and can send you  
the .hpp files if you want? I still need to update the examples and  
documentation though.

> PS: Some possible bugs found on Boost.Process 0.2 version (Windows):

Thanks, I'll go through the list later. There might be bugs in the POSIX  
code, too, because I never tested the code. But as I said priority #1 is  
currently merging all the snapshots again. :)

Boris

> [...]