From: Glen Holcomb <damnbigman@...>
Date: 2008-08-15T04:27:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Starting new process on Windows!

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On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 12:24 PM, Adam Shelly <adam.shelly@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 8/14/08, Glen Holcomb <damnbigman@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 8:38 AM, Mateusz Tybura <wujciol@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > Glen Holcomb wrote:
> > > > Is there an easy/clean way to start a new process in Windows that
> will
> > > > execute just a section of code?  I've tried win32-process but it
> spawns
> > > > a new version of the entire script which doesn't help in my
> situation.
> > >
> > > Try to use ruby threads. Example
> > > ...
> >
> >  I'm having an
> > issue where it appears that some combination of wx-ruby, win32ole, and
> the
> > garbage collector are causing my app to hang.  I was hoping to execute
> the
> > win32ole code in a separate process in hopes of avoiding the hanging
> > problem.
>
> My first thought was you could make your own fork-like functionality.
> But after I cooked up an example, I realized that the simpler thing
> might be to just extract the section of code in question to a separate
> script, and launch that in a new process with `start
> separate_script.rb input_data`
> Just in case it's useful, here's my initial solution:
> -Adam
> --------
> require 'win32ole'
> Datafile = "fork.dump"
> done = false
> do_ole = ARGV.shift
> data,result=0,0
>
> def oleprocess data
>  excel = WIN32OLE.new("excel.application") #your ole app here!
>  workbook = excel.Workbooks.Add();
>  excel.Range("a1")['Value'] = data;
>  excel.Range("a2")['Value'] = "=a1*a1";
>  result = excel.Range("a2")['Value']
>  excel.ActiveWorkbook.Close(0);
>  excel.Quit();
>  result
> end
>
> if (do_ole == "-o")
>  p "in new process"
>  File.open(Datafile,"rb"){|fp|data = Marshal.load(fp)}
>  result = oleprocess(data)
>  File.open(Datafile,"wb"){|fp|Marshal.dump(result,fp)}
>  exit
> else
>  data = 42  #initial_processing_here.  data could be arbitrarily complex
>  File.open(Datafile,"wb"){|fp|Marshal.dump(data,fp)}
>  timestamp = File.mtime(Datafile)
>  p "launching new process"
>  system("start ruby #{__FILE__} -o")
>  until done
>    print '.'; sleep(0.1) #do gui stuff and other work here while you
> are waiting...
>    if (File.mtime(Datafile) > timestamp) #other process is done
>      File.open(Datafile,"rb"){|fp|result = Marshal.load(fp)}
>      puts "\nsquare of #{data} is #{result}"
>      done = true
>    end
>  end
> end
>
>
Thanks guys, I appreciate it but it would appear the problem only occurs on
the Windows Server 2003 machine I was testing on.  It works fine in XP which
is a bit strange.

-- 
"Hey brother Christian with your high and mighty errand, Your actions speak
so loud, I can't hear a word you're saying."

-Greg Graffin (Bad Religion)

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