Hi to all, I recently needed s library to launch processes and I took a look to the recently announced Process 0.2 (http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2008/07/139322.php). I just needed the library for Windows, and I think the library is interesting although still lacking in some basic aspects (explained later in this post). A process-launching library is a very nice utility for Interprocess and I was thinking of adding this possibility for a future version (Boost 1.37 or 1.38) of the library. If Boost.Process is going forward, it would be glad to collaborate and develop a library that can satisfy all our needs and plays nicely with Interprocess. My main requests for a process-launching library are: 1) Ability to launch a process and a blocking or non-blocking wait operation to obtain its result (Boost.Process already has this). 2) Ability to redirect child process stdin/stdout/stderr to /dev/null, to share the stdin/stdout of the parent or to redirect it to a file. And in the latter case, append or overwrite options (Boost.Process implements some of this options). I slightly modified Boost.Process to implement a rought version of file redirection. 3) Ability to modify the environment variables of the child (Boost.Process already has this). 4) Blocking and non-blocking redirections of stdout and helper functions to simplify its usage (Boost.Process does not have this). For example: bool send_stdio_and_get_stdout (const void* stdin, std::size_t stdin_size, std::vector<char> &stdout); or similar would avoid many programming errors because at any moment stdin can block and we must extract stdout so that the child process can continue processing stdin. 5) I don't know if streams are the right way to communicate with processes, because they don't offer non-blocking support. 6) I think that process-launching interface should be similar to the soon to be standardized C++ futures. So I'm interested in a process-launching library and I offer my collaboration in case Boost.Process development needs help. Regards, Ion PS: Some possible bugs found on Boost.Process 0.2 version (Windows): -> main thread handle returned by CreateProcess in PROCESS_INFORMATION structure the must be closed and I can't find this in the code. -> child::wait function returns sporadic errors when multiple children are launched and waited. I changed the code from: do { ::GetExitCodeProcess(handle_, &code); ::Sleep(500); } while (code == STILL_ACTIVE); ::WaitForSingleObject(handle_, 0); ::CloseHandle(handle_); with ::WaitForSingleObject(handle_, INFINITE); ::GetExitCodeProcess(handle_, &code); ::CloseHandle(handle_); ->environment::set does not correctly overwrite existing variables): void set(const std::string &var, const std::string &value) { insert(value_type(var, value); } should be void set(const std::string &var, const std::string &value) { this->operator[](var) = value; } -> Using named pipes has been problematic because it returns errors when launching multiple processes aggressively: Error 231 - All Pipes are Busy. This does not happen with anonymous pipes and I think it has some relationship with the guid code. By the way, I think a uuid library is too much to create a unique identifier to be shared with the child a simple atomic count would to the job in my opinion. That would reduce Boost.Process dependencies. -> systembuf::close() should call sync() to push the last charaters into the pipe, othewise, characters are lost if the user does not flush the stream. -> I've changed the "stream_info::usefile" case in win32_start to support redirecting to files, changing "CREATE_NEW" parameter of CreateFileA with CREATE_ALWAYS. -> And now, the most important one ;-) Please, avoid tabs! Read boost development guidelines: http://www.boost.org/development/requirements.html#Tabs