NAME
    P9Y::ProcessTable - Portably access the process table

VERSION
    version 0.96

HISTORY
    This module spawned because Proc::ProcessTable has fallen into bugland
    <http://matrix.cpantesters.org/?dist=Proc-ProcessTable-0.45> for the
    last 4 years, and many people just want to be able to get a simple
    "PID+cmdline" from the process table. While this module offers more than
    that as a bonus, the goal of this module is to have something that JFW,
    and continues to JFW.

    With that in mind, here my list of what went wrong with
    Proc::ProcessTable. I have nothing against the authors of that module,
    but I feel like we should try to learn from our failures and adapt in
    kind.

    *   Too many OSs in one distribution. I dunno about you, but I don't
        happen to have 15 different OSs on VMs anywhere. At best, I might
        have access to 2-3 different platforms. So, trying to test out code
        on a platform that you don't actually own is especially difficult.

        Thus, this module is merely a wrapper around various other modules
        that provide process table information. Those guys actually have the
        means (and the drive) to test their stuff on those OSs. (The sole
        exception is the ProcFS module, but that may get split eventually.)

    *   Too much C/XS code. The C and XS code falls in a class of
        exclusivity that makes it even harder to maintain. If I were to
        conjure up some wild guess, I would say that only 20% of Perl
        programmers could actually read, understand, and program C/XS code.
        People aren't calling the process table a 1000 times a second, so
        there's really no need for a speed boost, either.

        Alas, sometimes this is unavoidable, with the process information
        buried in C library calls. However, the "/proc" FS is available on a
        great many amount of UNIX platforms, so it should be used *as much
        as possible*. Also, I take this moment to shake my tiny little fist
        at the BSD folks for actually regressing the OS by removing support
        for "/proc". All of the reasons behind it are unsound or have
        solutions that don't involve removing this most basic right of UNIX
        users.

AUTHOR
    Brendan Byrd <bbyrd@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
    This software is Copyright (c) 2013 by Brendan Byrd.

    This is free software, licensed under:

      The Artistic License 2.0 (GPL Compatible)

