On 06/19/2016 05:03 AM, Max Leske wrote: Hi,
In Pharo and Squeak we have no separation between processes that belong to the IDE, tools etc. and processes that are spawned as part of an application. Iâd like to know your opinion on the following (rough) idea:
1. We introduce two subclasses of Process: SystemProcess and UserProcess 2. We define #isSystemProcess and #isUserProcess 3. We introduce #newSystemProcess and #newUserProcess 4. We deprecate #newProcess and delegate to #newUserProcess (thereby modifying all users of #forkXXX to yield instances of UserProcess)
Of the following Iâm less sure: 5. We introduce #forkSystemProcess et. al
Iâve tried this out in Pharo 6 and there seem to be no problems with the VM. The benefit would be improved separation between system and user space. It would allow us to implement stuff for processes in general (e.g. for the debugger) which we do not want to affect system processes like the UI process or the background process. One concrete example: the process browser could hide all system processes and make them visible on demand (that would greatly improve the view because you can now better find your own processes).
Iâm looking forward to your comments.
Cheers, Max
On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 3:32 AM, Tony Garnock-Jones <tonyg@ccs.neu.edu> wrote: Hi Max,
Perhaps a notion of process grouping might make sense? Following the zero-one-infinity principle, having exactly two kinds of process seems a bit odd.
Having process grouping would lead to a tree of processes.
For example, the outermost level could be "system" processes, of which one was a group containing all "user" processes.
Or, the outermost level could have two children, one group of "system" procs, one of "user" procs; or, ...
The "current process group" would be a kind of dynamic parameter, and newly-forked processes would by default become siblings of the forker in the current group.
Regards, Tony
This sounds like a good idea. It would make it easier for a user of multiple applications in one image to properly kill one. For this reason, perhaps there should be some impediment on apps adding processes adding the System Process group(??)
cheers -ben
Yes. Thatâs why in my proposal the default is to create a user process. Cheers, Max