comp.lang.ruby

Jonathan Paisley

3/15/2005 5:07:00 PM

On 15 Mar 2005, at 16:47, Berger, Daniel wrote:

> Ara Howard had brought up an Open4 back in http://rubyurl.... I
> mention this because the win32-open3 package already has an Open4
> module
> that uses Ara's API approach (i.e. returns a pid as a 4th argument).

Yes, I should have mentioned Ara's Open4. I had been talking to Ara
about the possibility of merging our two approaches (possibly providing
the procedural interface on top of the object-oriented one).

> If folks want to change things, that's fine. But the Ruby community
> should try to come to a consensus as to what the API should look like
> and how it should behave.

Good point.

In my implementation, I've avoided the double-fork technique because I
want the child to keep its association with the parent, in particular
to support sending signals and waiting on the child to complete.

Since the library manages a list of children it is able to reap them at
opportune moments.

So, I'd argue for providing both the procedural and object-oriented
approach, with the former built upon the latter. Of course, the API
would have to cover the functionality present on unix and win32.

I'm not so keen on the Open4 name - I'd prefer something like
ChildProcess.

In summary - can we come up with a consensus as to what the API should
look like and what its behaviour should be? (w.r.t. double forks,
waiting, etc).

Thanks.
Jonathan