[PEAK] peak lanuch and freebsd

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 09:33 PM 11/1/04 -0500, R. David Murray wrote:
>On Mon, 1 Nov 2004, Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> > It sounds to me like maybe Python is waiting for w3m to finish before it
> > starts the web server.  The 'webbrowser' module just does the 
> equivalent of:
> >
> >       os.system("w3m http://localhost:2854/")
> >
> > So if 'w3m' doesn't fork off another process at that point, it's going to
> > be hosed in a way much like what you describe.  Try setting:
> >
> >       BROWSER="w3m %s &"
> >
> > and run peak launch.  I think this might be needed for certain Unix 
> browsers.
>
>The first way would not work for any of the unix browsers I have
>used (w3m, links, lynx, firefox), nor would I expect it to or, for
>that matter, want it to.  Logically, if you expect the process the
>continue on and do some work, shouldn't you be forking that process?

Well, that's just how the Python 'webbrowser' module works.  I suspect that 
the reasoning partly has to do with whether the browser is graphical or 
not.  For Mozilla, KFM, Netscape, Grail, and Windows/Mac browsers, the 
behavior is equivalent to a fork.  It's only Mosaic, lynx, links, and w3m 
that get launched synchronously.

I suppose that I could hack 'peak launch' to detect that 'webbrowser' is 
running a "GenericBrowser" on Unix and attempt to fork().  I need to give 
it some more thought, though.