From: Paul Brannan <paul@...>
Date: 2002-03-20T07:11:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Development of Windows version of Ruby

On Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 05:35:31AM +0900, Dennis Newbold wrote:
> Many times, this is not all that difficult, and only entails a little
> bit of conditional compilation or something like that.  This is
> because often, a fork is followed immediately by an exec, and in
> Windows this can be done via a single Windows API call.

Perhaps, then, a solution to this fork problem would be to add a Ruby
method that does fork/exec on Unix and CreateProcess() on Windows?  An
additional parameter to system() to indicate that the current process
should not wait for the child to exit before continuing would be
sufficient.

This is by far the most common use of fork() for me.  I think there may
be a few more odd cases where I make use of it.

As for fork() and related non-portable calls, perhaps we should consider
doing as the Python guys have done: place such calls in a namespace of
its own that indicates that they are non-portable (see
http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/unix.html).

Paul