#25 GLib.spawn_async() opens new console window

[Bajusz Tamás]

On Windows every call of GLib.spawn_asyn(...) starts not just the subprocess but a new console window too. On Linux it's not doing this. Am I missing something or is this a known bug?

[tumagonx]

You meant the spawner window?
There is two spawner: gspawn-win32-helper.exe and gspawn-win32-helper-console.exe, the former don't show window

[Bajusz Tamás]

Sorry, but how can I influence in my python code which one will be used by GLib.spawn_async()? I find nothing about this in documentation.

[tumagonx]

BTW, please consult gspwn documentation, especially windows section. At any rate this should reported upstream.

[Bajusz Tamás]

I'v read this https://lazka.github.io/pgi-docs/#GLib-2.0/functions.html#GLib.spawn_async
but find nothing.

[Bajusz Tamás]

I'v read gspawn*.c sources and the conclusion is that GLib has no functionality on Windows(Linux is ok) what we need in PyChess. PyChess is a chess GUI program spawning chess engines (console programs!) to play/analyze with, but don't need console windows of child processes (chess engines) at all, just stdin/stdout/stderr to communicate with them.

It's pending from 2008: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=509201
The latest patch attached to the issue by Alexander Shaduri seems the way to go. Unfortunately not commented by upstream :(
Consider to add that patch to pygobjctwin32, please!

[tumagonx]

Thanks for the link, I will think about it for the next rev22. I used to simply overwrite gspawn-win32-helper-console.exe with gspawn-win32-helper.exe when encounter such case.

[Bajusz Tamás]

Unfortunately it doesn't help in our case. It doesn't force the actual started process to not open console window.

[Bajusz Tamás]

First test with rev22 produced:

AttributeError: 'gi.repository.GLib' object has no attribute 'SPAWN_WIN32_HIDDEN_CONSOLE'

To let it work, the patch needs an additional change. It has to add 'WIN32_HIDDEN_CONSOLE' into the SPAWN flags list in gi\overrides\GLib.py in line#505.

[tumagonx]

I see, well it's supposedly introspected without SPAWN prefix and in lowercase I don't know it been overrided. Sorry but I won't make revision just for that, not without other updates at least.

[Bajusz Tamás]

No problem I'm ok with rev22. It's in a .py file, so I can fix it easily myself for PyChess. Thx for adding the patch!