(Context) I'm developing a cross-platform (Windows and Linux) application for distributing files among computers, based on BitTorrent Sync. I've made it in C# already, and am now porting to C++ as an exercise.
BTSync can be started in API mode, and for such, one must start the 'btsync' executable passing the name and location of a config file as arguments.
At this point, my greatest problem is getting my application to deal with the executable. I've come to found Boost.Process when searching for a cross-platform process management library, and decided to give it a try. It seems that v0.5 is it's latest working release, as some evidence suggests, and it can be infered there's a number of people using it.
I implemented the library as follows (relevant code only):
File: test.hpp
namespace testingBoostProcess
{
class Test
{
void StartSyncing();
};
}
File: Test.cpp
#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
#include <boost/process.hpp>
#include <boost/process/mitigate.hpp>
#include "test.hpp"
using namespace std;
using namespace testingBoostProcess;
namespace bpr = ::boost::process;
#ifdef _WIN32
const vector<wstring> EXE_NAME_ARGS = { L"btsync.exe", L"/config", L"conf.json" };
#else
const vector<string> EXE_NAME_ARGS = { "btsync", "--config", "conf.json" };
#endif
void Test::StartSyncing()
{
cout << "Starting Server...";
try
{
bpr::child exeServer = bpr::execute(bpr::initializers::set_args(EXE_NAME_ARGS),
bpr::initializers::throw_on_error(), bpr::initializers::inherit_env());
auto exitStatus = bpr::wait_for_exit(exeServer); // type will be either DWORD or int
int exitCode = BOOST_PROCESS_EXITSTATUS(exitStatus);
cout << " ok" << "\tstatus: " << exitCode << "\n";
}
catch (const exception& excStartExeServer)
{
cout << "\n" << "Error: " << excStartExeServer.what() << "\n";
}
}
(Problem) On Windows, the above code will start btsync and wait (block) until the process is terminated (either by using Task Manager or by the API's shutdown method), just like desired.
But on Linux, it finishes execution immediately after starting the process, as if wait_for_exit() isn't there at all, though the btsync process isn't terminated.
In an attempt to see if that has something to do with the btsync executable itself, I replaced it by this simple program:
File: Fake-Btsync.cpp
#include <cstdio>
#ifdef _WIN32
#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
#define SLEEP Sleep(20000)
#include <Windows.h>
#else
#include <unistd.h>
#define SLEEP sleep(20)
#endif
using namespace std;
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
for (int i = 0; i < argc; i++)
{
printf(argv[i]);
printf("\n");
}
SLEEP;
return 0;
}
When used with this program, instead of the original btsync downloaded from the official website, my application works as desired. It will block for 20 seconds and then exit.
Question: What is the reason for the described behavior? The only thing I can think of is that btsync restarts itself on Linux. But how to confirm that? Or what else could it be?
Update: All I needed to do was to know about what forking is and how it works, as pointed in sehe's answer (thanks!).
Question 2: If I use the System Monitor to send an End command to the child process 'Fake-Btsync' while my main application is blocked, wait_for_exit() will throw an exception saying:
waitpid(2) failed: No child processes
Which is a different behavior than on Windows, where it simply says "ok" and terminates with status 0.
Update 2: sehe's answer is great, but didn't quite address Question 2 in a way I could actually understand. I'll write a new question about that and post the link here.
