Bug 17112 - [ExternalTools] Should be able to run external tools asynchronously
Summary: [ExternalTools] Should be able to run external tools asynchronously
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Platform
Classification: Eclipse Project
Component: Ant (show other bugs)
Version: 2.0   Edit
Hardware: All All
: P2 major (vote)
Target Milestone: 2.0.1   Edit
Assignee: Ryan Cooper CLA
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: ui
: 19207 19460 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2002-05-22 18:20 EDT by Matthew Conway CLA
Modified: 2002-09-18 13:58 EDT (History)
4 users (show)

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Description Matthew Conway CLA 2002-05-22 18:20:35 EDT 
One should be able to run external tools (especially ant) asynchronously so that
the IDE isn't useless during long running tasks.  Instead of a progress dialog,
just print output to Log Console and have an animated running icon embedded
somewhere in in the Console's UI, along with a kill button on the Log Console
toolbar.

Its unreasonable to expect that users don't want to do other things in the same
IDE while running a lengthy build process, e.g. edit code in unrelated projects
to the one you are building
Comment 1 Erich Gamma CLA 2002-05-23 01:06:01 EDT 
moving to Platform-UI
Comment 2 Nick Edgar CLA 2002-05-27 21:41:05 EDT 
Supporting this would be very nice, but it is not a stop-ship problem.
Comment 3 Simon Arsenault CLA 2002-06-06 15:08:49 EDT 
*** Bug 19460 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 4 Nick Edgar CLA 2002-06-06 15:49:59 EDT 
Running an external tool like Notepad should not block the UI, and does not 
need a progress monitor.
Comment 5 Ryan Cooper CLA 2002-06-07 13:10:04 EDT 
*** Bug 19207 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 6 Nick Edgar CLA 2002-06-14 15:27:25 EDT 
Post 2.0.
Comment 7 Nick Edgar CLA 2002-06-14 15:51:03 EDT 
Post 2.0.
Comment 8 Nick Edgar CLA 2002-07-08 11:07:52 EDT 
As a workaround, on Windows you can do:
- create a new external tool
- for its location, use: c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe
- for its arguments, use: /C start yourprogram

The cmd will exit as soon as it has finished starting yourprogram, unblocking 
Eclipse.
Comment 9 Adam Schlegel CLA 2002-07-08 12:28:55 EDT 
Work around for Linux:

- Create a new shell script called tool.sh containing the text
#! /bin/sh
yourprogram $@ &
- Set the appropriate executable bits using the shell and chmod
- Create an external tool that runs tool.sh

The tool.sh file is necessary since External Tools isn't great at handling 
spaces on Linux, and doesn't do all the command line parsing that the shell 
does.
Comment 10 Simon Arsenault CLA 2002-07-22 13:43:35 EDT 
To be included in 2.0.1
Comment 11 Simon Arsenault CLA 2002-08-13 11:59:54 EDT 
Fix in 2.0.1 code stream. New bug 22393 was open to port this fix to 2.1 stream.