Chapter 1. Boost.Process

Julio M. Merino Vidal

Boris Schaeling

<boris@highscore.de>

Use, modification and distribution is subject to the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)

Table of Contents

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Introduction

Overview
Features
Non-functional requirements

Design overview

Creating, controlling and communicating with a child
Support for blocking and asynchronous I/O

Concepts

Executable
Arguments
Context
Process
Exit status
Handle

Tutorials

Child.1 - Starting a child
Child.2 - Waiting for a child to terminate
Child.3 - Reading from a child with a standard C++ stream
Child.4 - Reading from a child using asynchronous I/O
Environment.1 - Starting a child with an empty environment
Environment.2 - Starting a child with the current environment
Environment.3 - Starting a child with a modified environment
POSIX child.1 - Accessing status codes of a terminated child
POSIX child.2 - Using more than three communication streams
Windows child.1 - Setting up a context with startup information
Windows child.2 - Accessing process and thread identifiers and handles
Pipeline.1 - Creating children and connecting their streams

Platform-specific usage

The POSIX platform
The Windows platforms

Platforms and compilers

Supported platforms
Supported compilers
How to port to a new platform or compiler

Portability remarks

Generic classes
Shell commands
The environment
Exit status

Project position

History of changes
Pending work
Documentation

Acknowledgements

Reference

Download

Boost.Process is not (yet) an official Boost C++ library. It must be downloaded and installed separately. As Boost.Process is header-only the two directories boost and libs in the zip archive only need to be copied to your Boost directory. As Boost.Process has been tested with Boost 1.36.0 this is the minimum version supported.