Kill external process

[maricanis]

Hi,

I'm running some external processes from my plugin.
Since they can run rather long, I would like to offer a user possibility to abort started external process. Is there some elegant way to do it in SU?

Only way I've found for now is when user press some button, I call:

taskkill /f /im my_program.exe

or

tskill my_program

(since no idea how to get PID of the external process from my Plugin, I use image name or exectuable name).

BTW: I'm running process with UI.openURL() and batch_file.
I'm using SU 8 in Windows 7 operating system.

Thanks in advance,
Marija

[Dan Rathbun]

You can use tlist.exe (XP) or tasklist.exe (Vista/Win7) to check when the SU process ended.

(The catch is that XP Home doesn't come with tlist.exe, it must be ... installed separately*. It comes installed standard on XP Pro, or Win Server 2003+.

• is referring to the separate "Support Tools" installer on the Windows install CD.

And.. I do not know what the equivalent is on OSX.

[maricanis]

Thanks Dan,

For now plugin is only Windows oriented so these tasklist or tlist would do the job for listing running processes

[maricanis]

Hi,

I've implemented killing of external process (which is started by UI.openURL) with next method:
-call 'tasklist' - to check is process is still running and to get process PID
-then in plugin Process.kill("KILL",PID)

This approach works, but I also want to inform object that started external process that process is killed (so some timers are stopped).
I though to implement that with signals:
-after process is killed I send signal "USR1" for example
-and I trap the same signal in class that started process - and then stop timers.

Problem is that Sketchup doesn't recognize "USR1" signal.

I've tried in Ruby console:

Signal.list.keys.join ", " 
TERM, SEGV, KILL, EXIT, INT, FPE, ABRT, ILL

But none of these signals are the ones I need, I need some custom user defined signal for my plugin.

Is the thing I need possible, and how to do it in Ruby/Sketchup?

Thanks in advance,
Marija

[Dan Rathbun]

Just pass a reference of the timer id object, to the method that kills the process, and call UI.stop_timer(tid) from that method, after it is verified, that the process is dead.

[Dan Rathbun]

OR.. in object 1, write a callback method that is called from the killing object:

def deceased
  UI.stop_timer(@tid)
  # any other post death cleanup
end

Assumes you save a reference to the timer id, in object 1, when you started the timer, like:
@tid = UI.start_timer(delay,true) { # code block }

[maricanis]

Thanks Dan,

Your suggestion to write callback that is called from killing object, was very useful idea - and makes nice readable code.

Much better idea then various signals I planned to use before.

Thanks again,
Marija