> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian Mitchell [mailto:binary42 / gmail.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 7:48 PM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Re: MMU-less systems and vfork.
> 
> 
> On 5/4/05, Tim Sutherland <timsuth / ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> > In article <fcfe417005050220583afb4f37 / mail.gmail.com>, 
> Brian Mitchell 
> > wrote: [...]
> > >My question was: Will ruby still run when fork is not available 
> > >(replacing fork with vfork or cutting out fork). The quick 
> answer is 
> > >no.
> > [...]
> > 
> > The usual build of Ruby on Windows does not use fork - Ruby 
> does not 
> > require fork to operate.
> > 
> > If everything goes well, ./configure will notice that fork isn't 
> > available, and will not set HAVE_FORK in config.h.
> 
> This is what I needed to know. thanks. I should have looked 
> harder but my tinker time on this is limited. I do not yet 
> have my toolchain completely done yet but I should be able to 
> test this setting. BTW, I did get it partially working with 
> certain forms of fork (vfork implementation swapped in) but 
> as was said and as I knew, vfork is quite an different beast 
> but does the trick in some cases.
> 
> Now to figure out if I can slim it down anymore than using 
> the right compiler flags.
> 
> Thanks,
> Brian.

Perhaps adding Process.vfork to core Ruby wouldn't be such a bad idea.
In Perl, I believe you can optionally add vfork support during the
configure phase.  Maybe Ruby should consider a similar approach.

Regards,

Dan