[phobos] Major improvements to std.process

[Steve Schveighoffer]

This all looks good.  Do you want me to access your repository to put in the necessary Windows stuff, or should we start putting this in phobos directly?

-Steve



----- Original Message ----
> From: Lars Tandle Kyllingstad <lars at kyllingen.net>
> To: Discuss the phobos library for D <phobos at puremagic.com>
> Sent: Fri, March 12, 2010 10:20:09 AM
> Subject: Re: [phobos] Major improvements to std.process
> 
> I've committed a new version with the following changes:
> - Removed ChildTerminatedException, made wait() return -signal.
> - Added GUI flag which does nothing on POSIX.
> 
> 
> Steve Schveighoffer wrote:
> > [...]
> > 
> > It's just that the creation of the pipes and creation of the process always go 
> hand in hand, you very seldom want to separate those functions.  It's somewhat 
> of a nuisance to write many times "create this pipe, now this one, then create 
> the process that uses them".  It would be much nicer to just say "create the 
> process, use pipes for these handles, and give me everything back when you're 
> done."  I liken it to how constructors unify the process of creation and 
> initialization in one line.  Yes, you can split them, but why?
> > 
> > I'm not saying there isn't use for your signatures, I agree having 
> fine-grained control over which file descriptors are used is a good thing.  I 
> just think we should cater to common cases, even if it's via wrapper 
> functions/structs.
> 
> Ok.  I agree there should be a set of convenience functions to take care of the 
> most common tasks.  Here's a suggestion:
> 
>   struct ProcessPipes
>   {
>       Pid pid;
>       File stdin, stdout, stderr;
>   }
> 
>   // Spawn process with redirected input/output, return immediately.
>   // Our version of popen().
>   ProcessPipes pipeProcess(string command, RedirectFlags flags);
>   ProcessPipes pipeShell(string command, RedirectFlags flags);
> 
>   // Spawn process, optionally capture output, wait for it to finish,
>   // return exit code.
>   int execute(string command)
>   int execute(string command, out string output);
> 
>   // Run command in shell, optionally capture output, wait for
>   // it to finish, return exit code.  (Already implemented.)
>   int shell(string command);
>   int shell(string command, out string output);
> 
> -Lars
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