[kepler-dev] Combining the CommandLine and Exec actors

[Bertram Ludaescher]

Dan, Bilsay et al:

In order to return control immediately w/o waiting for the initiated
command/subprocess to finish, it should be possible to use "&", at
least in Unix-style systems, right? 

So the good old 
	$ myjob & 
would run myjob in the background. 

But then again, for platform independence it might be better to have a
parameter to the Cmd-Line actor that determines whether control is
returned immediately (a la "backgrounding") or after command
completetion. 

Ptolemy-hackers: 

Are there any directors (or could one conceive variants of the
existing ones) that are particularly well-suited/well-behaved with
Command-Line actor instances that return immediately? 

Bertram

Dan Higgins writes:
..
 > Finally, one option that I don't think we have considered in Exec or 
 > CommandLine is to launch a process and NOT wait for it to complete. 
 > (Currently I think we always use a 'waitFor()' method). This would be 
 > primarily of use for launching completely different applications for 
 > output/display at the end of a Kepler workflow. There are some occasions 
 > when this would be useful.
...