`Command` timeouts?

[Zooce]

Hi all,

I'm running Commands in a threadpool::ThreadPool, and I need to apply a timeout to each command (i.e., I don't want them running longer that x number of minutes).

I've tried using the try_wait function on a Child in a loop, things seem to get hung up and never finish.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[alice]

Can you post your loop?

[Zooce]

Unfortunately I trashed it, but it went something like this:

let exe_path = // ... a PathBuf ..
let mut command = Command::new(&exe_path);
// ... set up the command's arguments and working directory
let mut child = command.spawn().unwrap();
loop {
    match child.try_wait() {
        Ok(Some(status)) => {
            // gather the stdout and stderr into an Output struct
            break;
        }
        Ok(None) => {
            // if it's been too long since we spawned the child process kill it and break
        }
        Err(e) => {
            child.kill().expect("unable to kill process");
            break;
        }
    }
}

[alice]

I mean it looks reasonable to me.

Note that you should probably call yield_now or similar in the loop to sleep a little bit, although I don't think that's the problem.

[Zooce]

Oh, good call on yield_now.

I also tried to put child.wait() at the beginning of the Ok(Some(status)) but that didn't help either (the documentation mentions that it's necessary on some systems for releasing resources)...

[Zooce]

Here's the rough idea of the solution I ended up with:

enum Msg {
   Start(u32),
   End(std::io::Result<std::process::Output>),
}
let (tx, rx) = crossbeam::channel::unbounded();
let proc = std::thread::spawn(move || {
    // I'll show this to the user in case something bad
    // happens and they need to kill the process manually
    let _ = tx.send(Msg::Start(std::process::id());
    // create and run command
    // wait on the output
    let _ = tx.send(Msg::End(Ok(output)));
});
let mut pid: u32 = 0;
loop {
    match rx.try_recv() {
        Ok(Msg::Start(id)) => { pid = id; }
        Ok(Msg::End(output)) => {
            // handle output
        }
        Err(e) => {
            match e {
                crossbeam::TryRecvError::Empty => {
                    // check if we've spent too much time waiting and exit if so
                }
                _ => {
                    // the channel got disconnected - exit
                }
            }
        }
    }
}