[IPython-user] Launching background processes

[Ville M. Vainio]

On 11/29/06, Fernando Perez <fperez.net at gmail.com> wrote:

> No, IPython most certainly does NOT have the real low-level smarts to
> be used as a full system shell.  I know that some people use it almost
> as one, and I'm glad to see it being useful to others, but I've always
> said that this is an 'off-label' usage, in the sense that I'm very
> worried about people trusting it in such a critical point when I know
> it has pretty fundamental limitations still for that kind of job.

But still - many people just don't need job control all that much. And
esp. in Windows, since there the shell has no job control in the first
place.

However:

$ import jobctrl
$ &cp bigfile.tar c:/tmp

Can sometimes be enough of job control for you. That's what I use
myself to start background tasks.

> Having said that, Ville who now maintains the trunk, has made many
> improvements on this front, since he does have more use for those
> features than I do (many of the original support I implemented at his
> prodding and with his contributions).  So if he's willing to lead
> further work on this front and others want to contribute as well, hey,
> why not?

Yes, definitely. Extensions/jobctrl.py is a humble start on that area.

> Look at the signal module, and let us know how far you get :)

I'm a bit worried about this signal handling in concert with threads.
At first we should probably play with signals only on single threaded
IPython.

-- 
Ville M. Vainio - vivainio.googlepages.com
blog=360.yahoo.com/villevainio - g[mail | talk]='vivainio'