# Ruby Threads in Windows **URL:** \ **Category:** ruby-talk\ **Created:** [3 November 2008 16:30 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-threads-in-windows/49976 "2008-11-03T16:30:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dave\_Wilson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecc23a/32.png) [@Dave\_Wilson](https://rubytalk.org/u/Dave_Wilson)\ **Post date:** [3 November 2008 16:30 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-threads-in-windows/49976/1 "2008-11-03T16:30:22Z")
Hi all. And thankyou in advance to anyone who responds. I am quite new to Ruby and am working on Windows. I need to spawn new threads in ruby on windows which I can do fine, and I can see them in the windows process list. Is there are way of getting the process ID back for a thread? I can not use the Process module as my threads need to run concurrently (and everythign I have read says I should be using threads) and every time I try the "fork" command I am told its not supported. I also looked at the windows-pr gem but so far no luck. If I can get the ID of the process that the thread is running in I can kill it by spawning a kill.exe command, but I have been unable to get the process ID. I can not kill the process by name as the name is shared by other threads. Thanks Dave > **···** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Wilson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecc23a/32.png) [@Dave\_Wilson](https://rubytalk.org/u/Dave_Wilson)\ **Post date:** [3 November 2008 16:34 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-threads-in-windows/49976/2 "2008-11-03T16:34:59Z")
Oh yes, and the new threads are running exe's e.g. Thread.new { system("myExe") } > **···** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Hugh\_Sasse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Hugh\_Sasse](https://rubytalk.org/u/Hugh_Sasse)\ **Post date:** [3 November 2008 16:44 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-threads-in-windows/49976/3 "2008-11-03T16:44:47Z")
> Hi all. And thankyou in advance to anyone who responds. > > I am quite new to Ruby and am working on Windows. > > I need to spawn new threads in ruby on windows which I can do fine, and > I can see them in the windows process list. Is there are way of getting > the process ID back for a thread? It will be the same as the process id for the whole program. Threads are done within the process. > I can not use the Process module as my threads need to run concurrently > (and everythign I have read says I should be using threads) and every > time I try the "fork" command I am told its not supported. It's not on Windows. What are you trying to do (with the threads)? You might find that DRb is better and kicking off several ruby programs that connect to your DRb Server is what you want, if you have enough processors\>cores available. > I also looked at the windows-pr gem but so far no luck. > > If I can get the ID of the process that the thread is running in I can > kill it by spawning a kill.exe command, but I have been unable to get > the process ID. You will kill the whole program. Thread#kill already exists.   x = Thread.new do         compute\_ultimate\_question       end   vogon = Thread.new do            Thread::kill(x)           end > I can not kill the process by name as the name is shared by other > threads. > > Thanks > > Dave         Hugh > **···** > > On Tue, 4 Nov 2008, Dave Wilson wrote: ---
**Author:** ![Glen\_Holcomb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecc23a/32.png) [@Glen\_Holcomb](https://rubytalk.org/u/Glen_Holcomb)\ **Post date:** [3 November 2008 16:45 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-threads-in-windows/49976/4 "2008-11-03T16:45:03Z")
Threads don't spawn as separate processes in Ruby \< 1.9 (I'm not positive about \>=1.9) You are actually creating a new process with the system command. If you are just trying to avoid blocking you could use system("start process") as start returns immediately. Otherwise I'm not sure, you might have to spawn via Win32API rather than system to get the pid. > **···** > > On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 9:34 AM, Dave Wilson \ wrote: > > > Oh yes, and the new threads are running exe's e.g. > > > > Thread.new { system("myExe") } > > > > -- > > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/\](http://www.ruby-forum.com/%5C). > > -- > "Hey brother Christian with your high and mighty errand, Your actions speak > so loud, I can't hear a word you're saying." > > -Greg Graffin (Bad Religion) ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Wilson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecc23a/32.png) [@Dave\_Wilson](https://rubytalk.org/u/Dave_Wilson)\ **Post date:** [3 November 2008 17:11 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-threads-in-windows/49976/5 "2008-11-03T17:11:45Z")
Thanks for the quick responses guys. Its late in the day here so I will read over them tomorrow and get back to you. My main issue is that the threads my app (and its a testing app) spawns have the same name as the original running app. Long story short I dont have much control over the environment, but recently I have been looking to move to runit to try and clean the tests up, but what I have found is originally the app ran as a ruby process from the command line (process name was 'ruby'), spawning 'rubyw' processes. Now becuase eclypse runs runit tests as a rubyw process (test and spawned threads now have same process name), the code which killed off the old child processes is acually killing the test itself. As I said, I dont have full control over the environment (financial company who are strict about OS types and approved technologies) so I am somewhat limited in my options (win 2k is a nightmare). So if anyone knows a better way to launch a new thread which I can kill/terminate so it no longer appears in the process list, I am all ears. Thanks, and as I said I have not ahd a chance to review the responses. > **···** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Hugh\_Sasse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Hugh\_Sasse](https://rubytalk.org/u/Hugh_Sasse)\ **Post date:** [3 November 2008 17:26 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-threads-in-windows/49976/6 "2008-11-03T17:26:27Z")
> Thanks for the quick responses guys. > > Its late in the day here so I will read over them tomorrow and get back > to you. > > My main issue is that the threads my app (and its a testing app) spawns > have the same name as the original running app. Long story short I dont > have much control over the environment, but recently I have been looking > to move to runit to try and clean the tests up, but what I have found is > originally the app ran as a ruby process from the command line (process > name was 'ruby'), spawning 'rubyw' processes. Now becuase eclypse runs > runit tests as a rubyw process (test and spawned threads now have same > process name), the code which killed off the old child processes is > acually killing the test itself. I'd still advise a step further back. What are you trying to achieve that means you have multiple threads or processes, or jobs, or .....? And, why do you have to kill them? Why can't they be allowed to complete? If you must kill them based on time, use Timeout.rb . > As I said, I dont have full control over the environment (financial > company who are strict about OS types and approved technologies) so I am > somewhat limited in my options (win 2k is a nightmare). Will they let you use Windows Powershell instead? Given that it's native you may find it easier than trying to get Ruby to do what you want. I can't remember if Win2k has CMD.exe and how sophisticted it is if it does. > So if anyone knows a better way to launch a new thread which I can > kill/terminate so it no longer appears in the process list, I am all > ears. You've not really said what the problem you are trying to solve with this is. If the jobs are ruby programs, then they might stay strictly within threads in the same process. > Thanks, and as I said I have not ahd a chance to review the responses.         Hugh > **···** > > On Tue, 4 Nov 2008, Dave Wilson wrote: ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Wilson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecc23a/32.png) [@Dave\_Wilson](https://rubytalk.org/u/Dave_Wilson)\ **Post date:** [4 November 2008 13:50 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/ruby-threads-in-windows/49976/7 "2008-11-04T13:50:41Z")
OK thanks, I have solved the issue. The original problem is to do with watir popup handling. My work has written a massive (and bloated) testing framework around watir to test a highly varient application. I am currently reworking this framework to try and clean it up a but. The recommended approach for handling popups in Watir does not seem to work on our machines (none of the unit tests wupplied with watir work) and I currently cant upgrade them, so the original test framework handled them by running ruby code in a new process which ran in the background and waited for the popups. The approach was 1) Launch new popup thread 2) Fire event that caused popup In some cases we dont get popups (environment logins etc) so the rubyw processes would remain until a new test would launch another popup thread and then we would ahve 2 threads attempting to login at the same time. I hasten to add I did NOT design the original framework and I dont like this brute force approach to popups. So taking your advice I have taken a new approach which is to wrap the event that (potentially) causes the popup in a timeout, and the recover to that timeout is a popup handler which runs in the same thread. If the popup does not apprear, the method does not time out so the popup handler is not created. Its not a great solution but will do until the framework is updated to the latest version of watir and ruby. And hopefully a newer OS. Thanks for your help. > **···** > > -- > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/).