kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 1/17/2012 1:00 PM, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
> 
> This thread shows how bad the wxExecute and wxProcess support are in wxWidgets:
> 
> http://trac.wxwidgets.org/ticket/12636
> 
> I read it once, and tears were in my eyes before I got to the end.

Yuck!  It looks like the wxWidgets folks have some work to do.  It
appears they are working on it but it may be a while before they have a
solution that will work for us.

> 
> Of course the problem we always have on linux is the locking up of the child process
> 
> 
> 
> Perhaps we should do these steps:
> 
> 1) Change common's
> 
> bool ProcessExecute( const wxString& aCommandLine, int aFlags )
> 
> to
> 
> bool ProcessExecute( const wxString& aCommandLine, bool runAsync = true )
> 
> 
> 2) Move it into its own processexecute.cpp source file, still in libcommon, so that we can
> use unusual, system dependent header files in that single implementation file.
> 
> 
> 3) Think about using boost/process.hpp to launch our child programs, or a combination of
> fork() and exec() on linux (google around for a combo function).
> In any case this is now in its own file, and we control the strategy in a single place. 

This makes sense to me.  If we have to roll our own solution, then it
could get rather complex so putting it in it's own file is a good idea.

> 
> The piping back into the parent process must be omitted, we don't use it or want it, and
> hopefully this can finally clean up the locking up on Debug and sometimes Release builds.
> 
> 
> If either:
> 
> a) boost/process.hpp were to require compiled library files, or
> b) it did not become available until after our current boost version,
> 
> then I would score this against it heavily.  But if it can be done by the addition of a
> few boost version compatible header files, this is worth a look.

I don't believe Boost process has been excepted for the next release of
Boost.  Here is the original review post on the Boost mailing list:

http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2011/02/176751.php

After reading a few responses, it looks like there is still quite a bit
of work to do before it will be included into Boost.

We could always grab a copy from:

http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/process/boost/

and give it try.

Wayne

> 
> Again, its a good thing we have our own wrapper function ProcessExecute(), so details are
> not exposed.
> 
> I am suggesting that someone else do this work.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Dick
> 
> 
> 
>