Crate pipedconsole

Create multiple consoles for a windows application.

This crate makes use of windows Named Pipes to enable a process to controll multiple consoles.

Quick Overview

Normaly a program running on windows can only use one console.

A process can be associated with only one console, so the AllocConsole function fails if the calling process already has a console.

From the microsoft docs.

This crate solves this problem by providing an abstraction over a worker process wich is controlled using named pipes.

Examples

You can use the Console class to create a new console, after that you can write to it or read a line. It is planned, that Console will also implement the Read and Write traits.

use pipedconsole::Console;
 
let my_console = Console::new("My Console").expect("Failed to create a new console");
my_console.println("What is your name?"); // seperate window
 
let mut name = String::new();
my_console.read_line(&mut name).expect("Could not read from the console");
println!("Your name is: {}", name); // main processe's console

When the console object is dropped or the calling program exits, the console will close automaticly, unless another process also writes to it.

Important

This crate comes with a build script wich tries to compile the console_worker executable. You need to have the cargo command usable in order for it to work. This script is important because cargo does not build binaries inside library crates, so it needs to be done manually.

If the build script runs for the first time, it will display an info message.

When you run your program, a call to Console::new will do the following:

1. It trys to find the console_worker executable in the same directory as the currently running one. This will always work, if you put console_worker.exe into the same folder as any executable calling Console::new().
2. If it cant find the executable, it tries to find it at the default path cargo will put it when you build normally. This only works inside the default cargo project structure and makes it easier to just use this crate as-is.

If you want to move your executable and run it in a new directory because of some reason, you will have to find console_worker.exe on your computer. For more information on where you can find it, run the build script again with the PIPED_CONSOLE_HELP environment variable set.

If you use cmd:

set PIPED_CONSOLE_HELP=TRUE
cargo clean
cargo build 

This should display a message on where the console_worker executable is located.

Additional Information

Creating a new Console will create a new seperate process. That means you will see a “console_worker” process in your task manager. That process is just the console listening for commands to execute.

In order to interface to a console-worker process using another language etc. you can manually launch it and then connect to the named pipe wich is created. For more information about this see the worker documentation inside the repository. You can find the worker binary files at /src/bin/console_worker/main.rs

Structs

Console

Used for printing and reading from an external console.

Error

The main error type used by this crate.

Enums

ErrorKind

The error type returned by all functions that interact with a Console.