[Vm-dev] System and user processes

Max Leske maxleske at gmail.com
Sun Jun 19 09:03:03 UTC 2016


Hi,

In Pharo and Squeak we have no separation between processes that belong to the IDE, tools etc. and processes that are spawned as part of an application. I’d like to know your opinion on the following (rough) idea:

1. We introduce two subclasses of Process: SystemProcess and UserProcess
2. We define #isSystemProcess and #isUserProcess
3. We introduce #newSystemProcess and #newUserProcess
4. We deprecate #newProcess and delegate to #newUserProcess (thereby modifying all users of #forkXXX to yield instances of UserProcess)

Of the following I’m less sure:
5. We introduce #forkSystemProcess et. al

I’ve tried this out in Pharo 6 and there seem to be no problems with the VM. The benefit would be improved separation between system and user space. It would allow us to implement stuff for processes in general (e.g. for the debugger) which we do not want to affect system processes like the UI process or the background process. One concrete example: the process browser could hide all system processes and make them visible on demand (that would greatly improve the view because you can now better find your own processes).


I’m looking forward to your comments.

Cheers,
Max


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