nrdvana/perl-Proc-Background

Package Proc::Background Version 1.30

This is the Proc::Background package. It provides a generic interface to running background processes. Through this interface, users can run background processes on different operating systems without concerning themselves about the specifics of doing this. Users of this package create new Proc::Background objects that provide an object oriented interface to process management. The following methods are provided to users of the Proc::Background package:

new:        start a new background process.
alive:      test to see if the process is still alive.
suspend:    pause the process
resume:     resume a paused process
terminate:  reliably try to kill the process.
wait:       wait for the process to exit and return the exit status.
start_time: return the time that the process started.
end_time:   return the time when the exit status was retrieved.

A generic function, timed_system, is also included that lets a background process run for a specified amount of time, and if the process did not exit, then the process is killed.

AVAILABILITY

The latest released version of this package is available for download from a CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) archive near you in

https://metacpan.org/pod/Proc::Background

The package's source code is hosted in a Git repository at

https://github.com/nrdvana/perl-Proc-Background

INSTALLATION

In order to use this package you will need Perl version 5.004_04 or better.

On Win32 systems Proc::Background requires the Win32::Process and Win32::ShellQuote modules. To check if your Perl has Win32::Process installed on it, run

perl Makefile.PL

If this command does not complain about missing Win32::Process, then you have the module installed. If you receive an error message, you can do two things to resolve this. If you have not performed extensive customization and installation of modules into your Perl, the easier path is to upgrade to the latest version of ActiveState Perl at

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl/

which includes Win32::Process. If you want to use your current Perl installation, then download the latest version of the libwin32 package by Gurusamy Sarathy available at:

http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/G/GS/GSAR/

Once that is completed, you install Proc::Background as you would install any perl module library, by running these commands:

perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

You can edit the configuration section of Makefile.PL to select which programs to install in addition to the library itself. If you don't want to install any programs (only the library files) and don't want to mess with the Makefile.PL then pass the '-n' option to Makefile.PL:

perl Makefile.PL -n

If you want to install a private copy of this package in some other directory, then you should try to produce the initial Makefile with something like this command:

perl Makefile.PL LIB=~/perl

DOCUMENTATION

See the CHANGES file for a list of recent changes. POD style documentation is included in all modules and scripts. These are normally converted to manual pages end installed as part of the "make install" process. You should also be able to use the 'perldoc' utility to extract documentation from the module files directly.

nrdvana / perl-Proc-Background

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