Re: [Mingw-users] How to write a "proper" Win32 daemon using MinGW?

[Konrad H. <ko...@pa...>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Latest [mailto:bob...@gm...]
> Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2012 1:57 PM
> To: MinGW Users List
> Subject: [Mingw-users] How to write a "proper" Win32 daemon using MinGW?
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I'd like to know if it is at all possible to write UNIX-like daemons
> in a MinGW (non-MSYS) environment. Of course I could just go ahead and
> try to cook something that fork()s off and does its thing in the
> background, but I'd like to know if it works on Windows just as on
> Linux. On startup, the program must check if another instance is
> already running, and must abort. Alternatively, when called a second
> time with a command-line option, it must cause the existing process to
> cleanly terminate.

Robert --

I've been watching this thread in anticipation of learning a new trick 
that I could accomplish with MSys/MinGW that also runs on Linux.

Alas, no joy <G>.

I have written and compiled several Portable Linux Daemons that also run
as Windows Services using Active State's PDK.

Starting as a single perl-script which is compiled to a.exe for Windows
or an elf binary for Linux, Active State perl is the most portable and
'UNIX-like' method I have yet found (<G> but I am still looking <G>).


> Since all the program does is a periodic consistency check of a bunch
> of files once a minute, writing out the result in another file, it is
> trivial to just have a batch file call the program in an infinite
> loop. This is what I'll do for the first testing version. Eventually I
> would like the thing to run invisibly in the background without
> littering the task bar with nonsensical command windows though.

This is something that Perl could do very well.

Maybe take a look at perl as included with MSys / MinGW ?

If you need to compile the code, Active State Perl is 'one way to do it'.

-- kjh(<G> I don't work for Active State, nor do I own any stock <G>)