Getting subprocesses to be hidden on Windows

[kyosohma at gmail.com]

On Aug 28, 4:08 am, geoffbache <geoff.ba... at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Aug 27, 11:28 pm, kyoso... at gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Aug 27, 3:21 pm, geoffbache <geoff.ba... at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > > Hi,
>
> > > As part of my efforts to write a test tool that copes with GUIs
> > > nicely, I'm trying to establish how I can start a GUI process on
> > > Windows that will not bring up the window. So I try to hide the window
> > > as follows:
>
> > > info = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
> > > info.dwFlags |= subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
> > > info.wShowWindow = subprocess.SW_HIDE
>
> > > proc = subprocess.Popen(..., startupinfo=info)
>
> > > This works, in a way, but doesn't work recursively. I.e. if the
> > > started process itself starts a window, that second window will not be
> > > hidden. This even applies to dialog boxes within the application. So
> > > instead of a lot of windows popping up I now get a lot of disembodied
> > > dialogs appearing, which is a slight improvement but not much.
>
> > > Also, certain processes (e.g. tkdiff) seem to ignore the directive to
> > > be hidden altogether.
>
> > > This is dead easy on UNIX with virtual displays like Xvfb. Can someone
> > > shed any light if it's possible on Windows from python?
>
> > > Regards,
> > > Geoff Bache
>
> > I'm confused. Why would you create a GUI if you're not going to
> > actually display it? Isn't that the point of a GUI? Or are you talking
> > about the command window popping up?
>
> > Mike
>
> Only in the context of testing it. If I run lots of GUI tests on my
> computer I want
> the tested GUIs to remain hidden so I can still use my computer in the
> meantime...
>
> Though if you can tell me how to stop the command window popping up on
> Windows
> I'll be grateful for that too (though it wasn't the original
> question).
>
> Geoff

Which GUI toolkit are you using? Tkinter, wxPython, pyQt? As for
losing the command window on Windows, the best way that I know of is
to just change the extension of the python file itself from *.py to
*.pyw . I'm pretty sure you can suppress command windows if you're
calling them from the command line using a flag, but I can't recall
the flag off the top of my head.

One way to test while still being able to use your computer is to
install a virtual machine with VMWare or some similar product. I use
VMWare's free software for testing some of my scripts, but I've heard
that Microsoft's got a free virtual product that isn't half bad.

Mike