OK...

I think I have somethig close to what I am doing.

Instead of sleep x; imagine those are various Win32::Lanman calls that take from 1 to 5 seconds each.

I changed it to a Pulldown Menu to better show the lag in the gui. It's almost bearable if I tear off the menu and pepper my code with $mw->update(); but, that seems like cheating.

Any comments on how I'm trying to do this or my code in general are more than welcome.

Here's what I did:

#! c:\perl\bin\perl.exe
use Tk;
use Tk::ProgressBar;
use strict; # Had to turn off because of how I build %Items
use warnings;

my $pause = 0;
my $count = 0;
my %Items;
# Just to build the hash. It's actualy a nest of other data under it.
# {'status'}.. {'message'}.. {'tasks'}.. {'history'}[$histcount++]....
+                             
until ($count >= 10 )
    {
    $Items{$count}{'status'} = "1"; 
    $count++;
    }
             
my $mw = new MainWindow(-title => "demo");
$mw->configure(-menu => my $menubar = $mw->Menu);
my $control = $menubar->cascade(-label => "~Control");

$control->command( -label => "Run",
                   -command => \&a_long_process );
$control->command( -label => "Pause",
                     -command => sub {$pause = 1;} );
$control->command( -label => "Resume",
                     -command => sub {$pause = 0; } );
$control->command( -label => "Run",
                     -command => sub{exit;});


my $F_Status = $mw->Frame( -relief => 'groove')->pack(-side   => 'bott
+om', 
                                                      -expand => 1,
                                                      -fill   => 'x');

$F_Status->Label(-text => ' Status:')->pack( -side => 'left');
$F_Status->Label(-textvariable => \$pause )->pack( -side => 'left');
my $F_Status_Target;
# Build P-Bars
foreach (keys %Items )
  {
  $F_Status_Target = $mw->Frame( -relief => 'raised',
                                        -borderwidth => 1);
  $F_Status_Target->pack( -side => 'bottom' );
  $F_Status_Target->Label( -text => $_, -width => 5 )->pack( -side => 
+'left');
  $F_Status_Target->ProgressBar(
        -from => 0,
        -to => 500,
        -blocks => 500,
        -colors => [0, 'blue'],
        -variable => \$Items{$_}{'p_bar'}
     )->pack( -side => 'left');
     $Items{$_}{'p_bar'} = 10; # Initial set
  }
  
  
MainLoop;

sub a_long_process 
  {
  foreach $_ (keys %Items )
    {
    print "$_\n";
    sleep 5; # In my case, map a drive, copy a file, schedule a task..
+..
    $Items{$_}{'p_bar'} = 100;
    $mw->update(); 
    sleep 2; # In my case, map a drive, copy a file, schedule a task..
+..
    $Items{$_}{'p_bar'} = 300;
    $mw->update(); 
    sleep 4; # In my case, map a drive, copy a file, schedule a task..
+..
    $Items{$_}{'p_bar'} = 500;
    $mw->update(); 
    if ($pause) 
      {
      while(1)
        {
        select(undef,undef,undef,0.1);
        last unless $pause;
        $mw->update(); 
        }
      }
   }
}
[download]

Below is my original post
Hello all,

I just made a nice gui from Tk (first time) for a program I wrote. It allows you to load up a config file, designate tasks... and a bunch of status bars and other stuff. The problem is, when I press the "Run" button, the gui freezes until the program is done, and then updates all the status bars and such.
I need to fork off the 'run_program' subroutine so I can return to Mainloop() but, then I loose control of the child and I still don't know the status of the program. (Everything I need is an a hash of hashes that is being built as 'run_program' runs.
IPC::Shareable sounds like it would fix all of my problems but, I'm running Win32... Is there a way this easily?
I've been banging on this for the last two days and haven't come up with anything yet except for a very complex set of pipes between programs.

Thanks for any help
-David

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