[Haskell-cafe] Patch to add process group support

Hamish Mackenzie hamish.k.mackenzie at googlemail.com
Sat Apr 17 11:26:54 EDT 2010


The attached patch for the process package adds support for creating and interrupting process groups on Unix and Win32 systems.  Currently we have to use a nasty hack in Leksah that only works on Unix systems (and even then not very well).  On Win32 Leksah's background build feature is dreadful as a results (because it has no way to interrupt the build and start over when the user makes more changes).

I would love to get this onto Hackage somehow, if not as a new version of the process package, perhaps as an alternative package ("process-groups" using System.Process.Groups instead of System.Process).

Please can you have a look and let me know what you think?

Thanks,
Hamish


This patch introduces the following functions to System.Process

* runCommandNewGroup, runProcessNewGroup, runInteractiveCommandNewGroup and runInteractiveProcessNewGroup __
These are variations on the existing functions for running processes.  They create the child process as the lead process in a new process group.
Unix - calls setpgid in both the parent and the child process after fork.
Win32 - calls CreateProcess with the CREATE_NEW_PROCESS_GROUP set.  I also had it unset CREATE_NO_WINDOW because this seems to prevent the child attaching to the parents console (and therefor stops interuptProcessGroup from working).

* interruptProcessGroup
This function can be used interrupt a running process group.
Unix - calls signalProcessGroup to send sigINT
Win32 - If the process ID is known it calls generateConsoleCtrlEvent to send cTRL_BREAK_EVENT


__ Compatibility __

Backward Compatibility
CreateProcess has a new field new_group which may need to be added to some existing code. If set to False the current behaviour is preserved. As far as I know this is the only change that could break existing code.

Linker Errors
I have renamed the C functions it used in order to prevent linker errors when using this new version with the existing process package.


__ Win32 Only __

On Win32 the process handle is not the same as the process ID and there is no reliable way to convert from one to the other.  I have added an interface that allows access to the process ID, but does not change the behaviour of the existing functions.

* PINFO
Replaces PHANDLE in the ProcessHandle type.
    type PINFO = (PHANDLE, Maybe Word32) -- Handle and Process ID

* mkProcessHandleWithPID
Like mkProcessHandle but allows you to specify the processes ID as well.  This function is now used in all the run functions so the ProcessHandle they return will contain a process ID.

* withProcessInfo and withProcessInfo_
Like withProcessHandle functions but gives you access to the PINFO (not just the PHANDLE it contains).

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