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Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:46:44 +0100 (CET)
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From: Thomas Wolff <towo AT towo DOT net>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: terminals getting killed on parent's termination
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In general, a GUI application started in the background, like a terminal,
should detach itself from its parent process so that it survives if the 
parent is terminated.
I've noticed the following sometimes surprising inconsistencies about this:

mintty
	xterm &
	mintty &
	exit
	-> all child terminals remain
mintty
	xterm &
	mintty &
	Close/Alt-F4
	-> dialog "Processes are running in session. Exit anyway?"
	OK
	-> xterm remains
	-> mintty is killed
xterm
	xterm &
	mintty &
	exit
	-> all child terminals remain
xterm
	xterm &
	mintty &
	Close/Quit
	-> xterm remains
	-> mintty is killed
cygwin console
	xterm &
	mintty &
	exit/Alt-F4
	-> console hangs
	Close
	-> mintty remains
	-> xterm is killed

I noticed, just as a testcase, that in those cases mintty gets killed 
also setup.exe gets killed.
Also, mintty can be protected from being killed by spawning it with 
(mintty&)
while xterm, spawned this way from a cygwin console, still gets killed.

Puzzled
Thomas

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