In reading Killing a hanging child process, most of the discussion seemed very Unix-oriented. (E.g. focusing on "fork" which is a terrible way to run a system command on Windows. See perlfork for details.)

One reply recommended Proc::Reliable, so I went to check that out, and then started looking at other similar modules on CPAN.

So far, the "best" -- loosely defined by me to mean portable, featureful and relatively efficient -- appears to be Proc::Background. (See this review, too.) Has anyone else used it? Any thoughts or reactions?

Here's a very short list of modules that I quickly examined with some observations.

• Proc::Background: Separate sub-modules for Unix and Win32 modes; API could be extended to other OS as necessary.

• Proc::Command: Piped open instead of backticks

• Proc::Reliable: Uses fork, even on Win32

• Proc::Simple: Tests fail/hang on Win32. (Not so simple, I guess).

• qr/Proc::Fork/: All these would appear to use fork, of course.

What modules have I missed? What are your experiences or suggestions for portable process management?

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