child_process.fork() issue

[rogerwang]

child_process module from Node is broken. This blocks Node applications offloading work to another process.

[zcbenz]

Does every method of child_process break for you or just one of the methods is broken? I can only confirm child_process.fork is broken.

[rogerwang]

yeah I mean fork.

-------- Original Message --------
From: Cheng Zhao notifications@github.com
Sent: Sat Nov 24 20:45:20 格林尼治标准时间+0800 2012
To: rogerwang/node-webkit node-webkit@noreply.github.com
Cc: Roger Wang wenrui@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [node-webkit] child_process module is broken (#213)

Does every method of child_process break for you or just one of the methods is broken? I can only confirm child_process.fork is broken.

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#213 (comment)

[zcbenz]

The implementation of child_process.fork is just to execute node itself with path to script as its parameters:

return spawn(process.execPath, args, options);

It failed in nw because we don't support to execute a .js file. Even if we do, the cost of child_process.fork would be quite expensive.

A quick fix of it is to distribute a node.exe along with nw.exe, and replace process.execPath with:

var path = require('path');
path.join(path.dirname(process.execPath), 'node.exe')

[rogerwang]

that's only a workaround. nw.exe should have a switch to behave in the same way as upstream node.exe

-------- Original Message --------
From: Cheng Zhao notifications@github.com
Sent: Sat Nov 24 22:06:11 格林尼治标准时间+0800 2012
To: rogerwang/node-webkit node-webkit@noreply.github.com
Cc: Roger Wang wenrui@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [node-webkit] child_process.fork() is broken (#213)

The implementation of child_process.fork is just to execute node itself with path to script as its parameters:

return spawn(process.execPath, args, options);

It failed in nw because we don't support to execute a .js file. Even if we do, the cost of child_process.fork would be quite expensive.

A quick fix of it is to distribute a node.exe along with nw.exe, and replace process.execPath with:

var path = require('path');
path.join(path.dirname(process.execPath), 'node.exe')

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#213 (comment)

[rogerwang]

This patch on src/third_party/node is the workaround, tested with node-compute-cluster:

diff --git a/lib/child_process.js b/lib/child_process.js
index 9b31586..bf200d6 100644
--- a/lib/child_process.js
+++ b/lib/child_process.js
@@ -444,7 +444,12 @@ exports.fork = function(modulePath /*, args, options*/) {
   options.stdio = options.silent ? ['pipe', 'pipe', 'pipe', 'ipc'] :
       [0, 1, 2, 'ipc'];

-  return spawn(process.execPath, args, options);
+  var path = require('path');
+  var nodePath =   path.join(path.dirname(process.execPath), 'node');
+  if (process.platform === 'win32') {
+    nodePath += ".exe";
+  }
+  return spawn(nodePath, args, options);
 };

[YurySolovyov]

is it going to be fixed to get default node behavior?
like var worker = child_process.fork('worker.js')

Please change title of this issue. Just reading the issue gives a false impression about
child_process.fork. I know this may have been a problem over year ago. But I am a new-be to node and node-webkit. There is good information here, but the title has too negative message.