From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2006-08-09T06:03:14+09:00
Subject: Nonblocking Windows Ruby popen?  (was: Re: C Threads and Ruby)

From: "Francis Cianfrocca" <garbagecat10@gmail.com>
>
> > The impression I got from the windows select() documentation
> > was that it only works with winsock sockets.
> 
> Ruby's Kernel#select is quite different from the native select. It's deeply
> intertwined with the green threads implementation. It basically knows how to
> handle anything that can be wrapped in a Ruby IO object.

This has been percolating in the back of my mind for a month
or so now.  :)

I presume, even though Ruby may be able to handle anything that
can be wrapped in a Ruby IO object, there's no implication that
this object can be handled in a green-thread-friendly way without
blocking all ruby threads?

I'm currently in search of a green-thread-friendly popen() in
Windows for Ruby.  I just tried the win32-open3 package, but a
#gets on the pipe still blocks the whole process.

Does anyone know whether a nonblocking popen() is *possible*
in Windows Ruby?  And if so, is there any existing implementation?

If not, what's the best substitute?  All I can think of offhand
is TCP connections on localhost/loopback.


Thanks,

Regards,

Bill