Allow serializing process object to a file

[matthijsvanderloos]

I'm looking for solution to create processes in an R application and after a restart of R to be able to check if processes are still running/finished, etc. For example:

# save 
saveRDS(p, file = "process.rds")
# load after R restart
p <- readRDS("process.rds")
p

As this point R crashes as there are null pointers in the restored p object. Any chance there will be a possiblity to store process objects?

[gaborcsardi]

This is not possible, because the file descriptors will be closed when the process exits, so when you unserialize the object, you cannot use them. So many of the methods would not work after serialization.

If you don't need the stdout, stderr, etc. connections, polling, etc. then you can save the process pid and start time ($get_start_time(), coming to the CRAN version soon), and then the new ps package (https://github.com/r-lib/ps, submitted to CRAN) to manage the processes. Of course you won't (easily) be able to poll the process, read stdout, etc.