On Sat, 10 Aug 2013 03:45:38 +0200, Geoff Shannon
[...]As a point of interest this interface is meant to be extremely simple. I don't intend to initially support ANYTHING except for basic creation and reading and writing.
I'm interested in named pipe support as Boost.Process could benefit a lot (not an official Boost library but everyone calls it like that). We have a function called create_pipe() which creates an anonymous pipe (see http://www.highscore.de/boost/process0.5/boost/process/create_pipe_id341354....). The function returns an object which is similar to a pair of file descriptors/Windows handles (see http://www.highscore.de/boost/process0.5/boost/process/pipe.html). The library refers to these things as pipe ends. The pipe ends can be used to create a boost::iostreams::file_descriptor_source or boost::iostreams::file_descriptor_sink object to do synchronous I/O (see http://www.highscore.de/boost/process0.5/boost_process/tutorial.html#boost_p...). For asynchronous I/O Windows requires a named pipe. Boost.Process doesn't provide anything out of the box to help users though. There is a create_async_pipe() function used in the documentation. But it's left as an exercise to the reader to implement it. :/ I actually implemented it in the unit tests. But there is too much hardcoded that it's of any use to others. This function create_async_pipe() returns the same pair of file descriptors/Windows handles as create_pipe() does. Instead of putting these pipe ends into Boost.Iostreams objects they are now used to instantiate boost::asio::windows::stream_handle or boost::asio::posix::stream_descriptor (see http://www.highscore.de/boost/process0.5/boost_process/tutorial.html#boost_p...). These classes from Boost.Asio can be used as is for asynchronous I/O with named pipes. All of that is really a low-level view as you actually deal with file descriptors/Windows handles. I don't know whether you want to go that way (your interface makes me think you are higher level). If you can provide a Boost.Asio I/O object for named pipes, or if you can provide access to the pipe ends of your named pipe it would however help to make asynchronous I/O with Boost.Process easier to use. Boris