It looks like I need to take an application that depends on select() for
spawning subprocesses & IPCing with them (via IPC::Run) and port it to
WinNT. I wouldn't mind porting to use poll(), if it's almost as
portable as select() is, or maybe only where it is.
A fellow named Sean McCune (Cced) will probably be doing most of the
hacking on this. We're trying to decide whether to try to add a general
solution to the perl guts or do the cheap and dirty thing and make
IPC::Run check for OS and choose a different strategy on
non-select()able OSs. Clearly any sane individual would take the latter
option, but we thought we'd flirt with insanity and see how hard the
perlguts route is first. I suspect we're insane: if this were feasible
ActiveState would likely have done it long ago.
So, is anyone working (really) on this, thinking about it, or interested
in contributing advice/time/whatever to such an effort? Nick
Ing-Simmons mentioned that there might be some possibility of and
interest in porting the new poll() implementation to Win32, IIRC.
Personally, I'd love to see IPC::Run's Expect-like & event loop modes
work with something beyond TCP sockets on NT, and Event.pm and POE would
benefit as well. I need pipes, others could use select() or poll() on
listening sockets or files, etc.
FWIW, Perforce will be funding some or all of this work on Sean and my's
part and they're happy to donate the resulting code.
- Barrie
