Re: Async commands in M-x compile

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

() Antoine Levitt <address@hidden>
() Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:43:49 +0200

   Can someone explain to me why compile doesn't support
   asynchroneous commands, and especially why it silently
   fails instead of displaying an error message? I don't
   understand the mechanism involved here.

   As a test, try M-x compile with
   "echo test > ~/test &" or "xclock &".

I think you mean to ask for "background" (job control) support.
M-x compile is already asynchronous.

If you want to the child process to not exit after it places
its own children processes in the background, you need to
tell it to ‘wait’, e.g.:

  M-x compile
  xclock & wait

Note that if you kill the *compilation* buffer, or interrupt
(via ‘C-c C-k’ aka ‘kill-compilation’) the child process,
most likely all of its children will likewise terminate.
Details depend on shell used and how that is initialized.

thi