process list for debugger attaching

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Wednesday September 14 2016 17:53:37 Aleix Pol wrote:

> Can you please explain concisely on why libksysguard doesn't fit the
> bill? Would it be possible to have a libksysguard backend that calls
> ps?

libksysguard is a swiss army knife that isn't the easiest to port, and that's also part of the Plasma universe which some consider strictly reserved to Linux and maybe a few related OSes. It makes sense to use it on a Plasma system because it'll likely be available anyway, but the fact remains that it's overkill for what KDevelop needs. I don't think there's any need for a process picker for KDevelop to allow changing process priority, killing them, etc.
Rolling your own widget also means you control when it gets ported to a new platform (there's nothing in libksysguard for MS Windows, for instance).

I already wrote a ps fallback in my OS X backend, so yes, it would be possible to use only ps for obtaining certain information, but that isn't an obvious choice for a library that aims to be a system monitor. Invoking ps multiple times for each and every process is going to have a cost.

IOW, it could certainly be justifiable to have a widget that puts up a simple no-frills list of running processes (PID, command name, possibly the full commandline) which could even have an auto-refresh feature, but I think that should rather go in a framework other than libksysguard.

R.