Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 00:06:41 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Paul Rawlins <prawlins AT flash DOT net>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Multi-processing from Emacs
In-Reply-To: <01bc2e22$5d8fc440$bbcbc2d0@paulr-home>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970312000128.2704X-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On 11 Mar 1997, Paul Rawlins wrote:

> I am using the DJGPP Emacs port for DOS. I would like to call a child
> process through the shell, but I get the message "Multiprocessing is not
> supported for this system."  Is this a limitation of DOS?  Are there any
> DOS extenders that permit multiprocessing?

There's nothing in DOS that prevents multi-processing (although DOS
non-reentrancy does make it harder).  When you install PRINT.COM or any
other printer spooler, you use multi-processing with DOS.  There's nothing
in CWSDPMI or the DJGPP setup that prevents this, either, so it's not a
question of which extender do you use.  It's just that MSDOS itself
doesn't give you system calls to manage multi-processing, so you must do
that on your own, and nobody has yet done that in DJGPP.  Once you do
that, it is a fairly simple job to enable async processes support in MSDOS
version of Emacs.