User:Jamesboston/nsIProcess

Name of Project

nsIProcess2

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, David Humphrey

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

(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.

April 20, 2009: Projected accepted for Google Summer of Code.

April 26, 2009: Created mercurial repository to hold extension used to stage code.

May 8, 2009: Setup mercurial server to publish code. Mirrors mozilla-central.

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.