One way to do it would be to fork off another process which would communicate to the parent through a socket and have the parent test the socket with select() in a repeat() event. Take a look at the code (untested snipets of an older app).
my $mw = MainWindow->new();
spawn_child();
$mw->repeat(100,\&read_child);
sub read_child {
my $rin = "";
vec($rin, fileno(CHILD), 1) = 1;
my $err = $rin;
for (0 .. 3) { # try to read from Child this many times before calli
+ng it quits
my ($nfound,$timeleft) = select($rin,undef,$err,0.001);
print "$nfound." if ($debug > 1);
while ($nfound) { # there is some data waiting to be read
my $line = <CHILD>;
...
($nfound,$timeleft) = select($rin,undef,$err,0.0001);
print ":$nfound" if ($debug > 1);
}
}
print "\n" if ($debug > 1);
}
sub spawn_child {
# parent process does only the GUI stuff all of the tester communica
+tion
# stuff hapens in the child only. The child sits around waiting for
+the
# parent to tell it to do something. The child does it, figures out
+the
# progress percentage, and informs the parent. The parent, upon rece
+iving
# this notification, update the GUI.
socketpair(CHILD, PARENT, AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, PF_UNSPEC);
CHILD->autoflush(1);
PARENT->autoflush(1);
die unless defined($childPid=fork());
if ($childPid){
close PARENT;
return;
}
# child process
close CHILD;
my $use_mfg_mode = 0;
Loop:
while(my $line = <PARENT>){
my $update = "";
print "received from parent: $line" if ($debug);
print PARENT "progress: $update\n";
}
print "Child is done!\n" if ($debug);
exit();
}
