From: Chris Gehlker <gehlker@...>
Date: 2002-03-20T01:36:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Development of Windows version of Ruby

On 3/19/02 9:05 AM, "Morris, Chris" <chris.morris@snelling.com> wrote:

> Can I try to steer the thread here?
> 
> The original post was that popen and fork don't work on Windows as of
> 1.6.6-0.
> 
> I tried popen on my Win95 box last night with 1.6.6-0 and it worked ... at
> least for the Dir command. Does this mean it works for everything? (I'd
> imagine so, but you know how computers are).
> 
> fork is not implemented.
> 
> Now, I've read other statements saying we're now missing 'all this cygwin
> functionality' -- but I'm not experienced enough to know what that is. The
> only solid things I've read is popen and fork. popen works, so then are we
> simply left with fork?
> 
> It seems to me we need to be discussing:
> 
> (a) what Ruby should do with fork on Windows.
> (b) what the other cygwin stuff we're missing is
> (c) what Ruby should do with (b) on Windows if there's anything there.
> 
> Chris
> 

Windows is pretty much a mystery to me but I seem to remember a function
called CreateProcess() that was at least roughly equivalent to fork(). Would
that work?

This is all from fading memory of job a had porting code *from* Windows.
There was a neat little program that defined all the Windows system calls. I
substituted fork() for CreateProcess(), IIRC, and it worked.

OT but kind of interesting recollection. The code I was porting was written
in VC++. As a first step, I ported it to CodeWarrior for Windows by cleaning
up the non-ANSI stuff. This version turned out to be so much quicker and
more stable on Windows that the company I was contracting with released it.
-- 
C++: The power, elegance and simplicity of a hand grenade.