User:Jamesboston/nsIProcess

Name of Project

nsIProcess2

Currently on hiatus.

Description

Replace the existing nsIProcess interface with new interface that:

• supports Unicode on all platforms
• supports piping to and from processes
• can handle asynchronous I/O via callbacks
• is available through Components.utils.import("resource://gre/process.js") or a similar JS module approach.

People

Leader

James Boston

Contributors

Steve Lee

Mentors

Mark Finkle, Benjamin Smedberg, Ted Mielczarek, Jason Orendorff

News and updates

Blog

All posts are tagged 'nsIProcess':
http://jamesboston.ca/cms/taxonomy/term/16

Or an RSS feed of the same:
http://jamesboston.ca/cms/taxonomy/term/16/0/feed

News and Progress

Currently on hiatus. Work will resume after final exams in Decemeber 2009.

(Click dates for attachments or info)

Sept 21, 2008: A first draft (an alpha version really) of the API is posted.

Sept 22, 2008: Released an updated version of an extension that serves as a temporary work around for nsIProcess bugs.

Sept 25, 2008: Submitted patch to bugzilla.

Oct 3, 2008: Submitted revised patch to bugzilla.

Oct 12, 2008: Opened a bug on NSPR lack of unicode support for Unicode arguments.

Nov 11, 2008: Submitted a new patch to bugzilla with Unicode support for Windows.

Nov 23, 2008: Submitted a new patch to bugzilla with isRunning() method.

Jan 25, 2009: Submitted a new patch with unit tests.

Mar 5, 2009: Submitted a new patch with minor revisions. The bug has now also been marked blocking‑fennec.

Mar 9, 2009: Changed interface to return void on run.

Mar 12, 2009: Patch pushed to mozilla-central. (Followed by a minor bustage fix.)

Mar 19, 2009: Filed a new enhancement bug that ties together the various features in the next stage of development.

Downloads

The code will be done in trunk. To get changeset:

hg pull http://hg.jamesboston.ca/mozilla/gsoc

Or to generate a plain text patch file containing all deviations from trunk visit:
http://jamesboston.ca/misc/patch.cgi

Details

The API for nsIProcess is not fully implemented. At present, the PID of a created process is not retained and cannot be killed. The API would also benifit from a new spec that includes inter-process communication.

An example of an API that for creating processes and communicating with them through STDIN/STDOUT is the Python subprocess module: http://docs.python.org/lib/node528.html

The goal of this project is to create a similar API for Mozilla.

API proposal

https://wiki.mozilla.org/NsIProcess

Existing API

Code snippet of how to use the existing API

Existing Code

http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/xpcom/threads/nsIProcess.idl
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/xpcom/threads/nsProcess.h
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/xpcom/threads/nsProcessCommon.cpp
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/xpcom/tests/unit/test_nsIProcess.js

Relevant bugs

Implement a replacement for nsIProcess
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=484246

nsIProcess.kill() does not work on Win32
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=442393

Implement inter-process communication (IPC) in Mozilla
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=68702

PR_CreateProcess in NSPR needs unicode support
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=459572

Submitted patches

Bug 442393 patches: Patches submitted to fix Bug 442393 - nsIProcess.kill() does not work on Win32

Meetings (Chronological)

Sept 19, 2008: Discussion with Benjamin Smedberg and David Humphrey to discuss the new API proposal.

Sept 22, 2008: Discussion with Mark Finkle and David Humphrey about the API design.

Sept 23, 2008: Discussion with Mark Finkle about using NSPR.

Oct 8, 2008: Discussion about string types and Windows paths in NSPR.

Oct 29, 2008: Advice regarding PRProcess type.

Nov 5, 2008: Getting advice on callbacks across XPConnect divide.

Nov 7, 2008: Round table on Unicode support.

Nov 23, 2008: Discussion about pathnames in xpcshell.