[comp.sys.amiga.tech] Starting processes under 2.0, Workbench, and RogueStart.

mcr@julie.UUCP (Michael Richardson) (06/01/90)

  [Please excuse the timelyness of this response. I've been very busy,
working days, cycling through supper and physiquing (or whatever it
is that physics students do when they are learning about physics
things) and have just caught up on a large number of news groups
which I don't feel justified reading at work.]


In article <8790@sbcs.sunysb.edu>, svarsha@ic.sunysb.edu (The MAD Programmer)
wrote on 8 May 90 18:03:09 GMT:
In article <11417@cbmvax.commodore.com> mks@cbmvax (Michael Sinz - CATS) writes:
sinz> Ok, so not so much "NO PROBLEM"  Well, the real answer is that you should
sinz> program by the rules and not empirically.  That is, don't just try things
sinz> and if they work think that they are right.  Design things while looking at

svarsha> This brings to mind a question that I'm suprised that none of the hackers here
svarsha> have asked already: Does 2.0 support a kosher way to start a CLI process by
svarsha> an existing CLI application (or even WB) such that:

  This is one of the first questions I asked. In the month since
svarsha's posting, I haven't seen any response. I've heard about ASL.library,
but that seems like more a "make-the-kludge-official" hack than a solution.
  Please tell me that there is an intelligent way to do things like:

svarsha> 1) New process has a full CLI environment.
svarsha> 2) Parent can specify Input() and Output() of new process
svarsha> 3) When new process exits, its CLI quits too without reading from Input().
svarsha> 4) And the new process will receive CTRL-C/CTRL-D/... signals from the parent's
svarsha>   console.

  I'd rather that a "CLI" environment meant nothing though.

svarsha> work well, but can't wait to see how miserably it fails in 2.0. I don't like
svarsha> doing that, mind you, but if there's a kosher way of doing this in 1.3, I'd
svarsha> like to know.

  As wonderfull as 2.0 is, I still have my reservations. Of course,
I haven't actually played with one, nor seen the developer manuals,
but my impression is that is has a lot of features, but perhaps
not the right facilities. This is weighed against news of things like
"commodities.library" which seems to be a facility. This is an aside,
please change the subject if you want to debate me on that one.



  Later, in article <5686@sugar.hackercorp.com>, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva)
wrote on 9 May 90 23:01:04 GMT:

In article <908@tau.sm.luth.se> Karl-Gunnar Hultland <d87-khd@tau.luth.se> writes:
d87-khd> In my case the MAIN program supports being launched either from WB or CLI
d87-hhd> which isn't very difficult 'cause I dont use stdio or cli-arguments, but
d87-kdh> the sub-programs being "launched" from the MAIN (and only from the main)
d87-khd> shouldn't have to bother about WB or CLI. All I want to is to start them,
d87-kdh> send them a message containing the address of the costomscreen I use,
d87-kdh> and when they exit let the MAIN program do the unloading.

Peter> Sounds good. I'd recommend keeping all the WBstartup stuff anyway, and in
Peter> main() look for a magic word *beyond* the normal WBStartup message. That
Peter> way if the child programs get started up under another environment by
Peter> accident they won't kill the system.

d87-khd> In my case i could go wild, but since your launch package does,almost,
d87-khd> all the work I'll use it. THe irritating part is that I'll have to allocate
d87-khd> and send an extra message to the child, with the address to the screen.

Peter> Just modify my launch program to send an extra two LONGs, one being a magic
Peter> word to indicate it's a "special environment" launch (like, if the first
Peter> word after WBStartup is "0xFEEDFACE"), and the other a pointer to your magic
Peter> stuff. One message, no problems.


  Along these lines, I've decided to bash my RogueStart stuff again
to make it able to launch workbench programs _or_ RogueStart programs
(and RogueStart stuff can be launched from Workbench or CLI)

  With Workbench 2.0, has the WBStartup structure been extended
or modified in any way? Since I'm going to have the structure as
the first member of my structure, I need to know what its final size
in 2.0 is. [Otherwise, I could allocate a number of bytes afterward
just in case it grows.]



   :!mcr!:               | Tellement de lettres, si peu de temps.
   Michael Richardson    |  If Meech passes, no one will understand that.
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    Amiga----^     - Pay attention only to MY opinions. -     ^--Amiga--^





p.s.   Out of curiosity, I'm going to start a collection of "special
tokens" as in:
  0xFEEDFACE
  0xDEADBABE
  0x...

  [I can only remember two right now.]
  Please mail me you favorite.