Process spawning

SDL Development
1

Hi,

I want to have a “shell” from which I want to spawn other processes (it’s like a game menu, you can select one of 4 games) which will then
load and run, and communicate with the shell for certain information.

My question is: can this be done under “pure” SDL, that is, not using OS-specific commands? Can I have more than one SDL window open at a time?

Thanks
Ed___________________________________________________________
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2

Edward Byard <e_byard yahoo.co.uk> writes:

Hi,I want to have a “shell” from which I want to spawn other processes (it’s
like a game menu, you can select one of 4 games) which will thenload and run,
and communicate with the shell for certain information.My question is: can this
be done under “pure” SDL, that is, not using OS-specific commands? Can I have
more than one SDL window open at a time? ThanksEd

Hi Ed,

I don’t think it is possible to spawn a separate process as a shell would do.
The next version of SDL that isn’t released yet (1.3.0) should be able to open
separate windows, however.

–Sam

3

I’d be very surprised if any modern OS can’t do that. I know Linux and Windows
can. The shell is also a program, just like your application. I’m not sure I
understand what you meant.

JeffOn Thu January 18 2007 08:00, Samuel Crow wrote:

I don’t think it is possible to spawn a separate process as a shell would
do.

4

I don’t think it is possible to spawn a separate process as a shell would
do.

I’d be very surprised if any modern OS can’t do that.

He means SDL doesn’t provide any facility for it. And he’s right…but
on Windows, it’s one line of code (ShellExecute()), and almost
everywhere else, it’s one line (system("/path/to/myapp/binary &") … or
fork/exec if you want to get fancy).

Separate processes can each have one SDL window in 1.2, but SDL 1.3 will
remove the restriction, so any process can have as many windows as it likes.

–ryan.