Win32::Process::Info

This module is intended to partly plug a perceived gap in Perl's Win32
functionality: the inability to traverse all (or nearly all) the processes
on the system, and get information on them. In a futile effort to be all
things to all people, it has a couple variants, which are (semi-) trans-
parantly selected among on the fly, depending on the environment in which
it finds itself:
* WMI - used if WMI is found on the machine;
* NT - used if WMI is not found, but Win32::IsWinNT () is TRUE.
If neither of these obtains (e.g. you're running Windows 95), I'm
afraid you're out of luck. You actually have control of which variant is
used, should you choose to exercise it. See the docs for more detail.

Because of Windows NT's security, it may not in fact be possible to see
literally every process; and some (e.g. process ID 0, the idle process)
may not have anything worth seeing. But this module does the best it can
with the rest.

Win32::Process::Info.pm contains POD documentation, which I do not
intend to repeat here. The following sample will give a flavor for how
it works.

use Win32::Process::Info;
my $pi = Win32::Process::Info->new ();
foreach $proc ($pi->GetProcInfo ()) {
    print "\n";
    foreach (sort keys %$proc) {
        print "$_ => $proc->{$_}\n";
        }
    }

That is to say, GetProcInfo returns a list of anonymous hashes
containing whatever information can be gleaned. The kit includes
a slightly more extensive script, ProcessInfo.pl, which produces
very slightly friendlier output.

Win32::Process::Info uses other libraries which are not part of the
standard Perl distribution (or weren't last time I looked!) Some are
only used under certain conditions, but you may see degraded
performance if you don't have them. The libraries used are
* Win32 - Required
* Win32::API - Required only by the NT variant.
* Win32API::Registry - Used only by the NT variant. It's optional
    there, but if you don't have it you may get somewhat less
    information, because the debug privilege can't be set.
* Win32::OLE - Required only by the WMI variant.

As of this release, all are standard with ActivePerl 5.6.1. Enough
are available under ActivePerl 5.8.0 to let the module pass the
self-test, but beyond that I can't say what the situation is.


INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
------------ ------------

CPAN kit:

expand the kit using GZip and TAR (or equivalent). Then issue the
standard commands:

 perl Makefile.PL
 nmake
 nmake test
 nmake install

Note that the "test" step is optional, but recommended. Also note that
although Win32 is required, it's _not_ in the dependencies, because
PPM3 doesn't seem to deal with it very well, and I suspect that most
users of this module have it installed already.

See ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe for a copy of
nmake if you need it.


PPM kit:

Expand the kit using unzip (or equivalent). Then

 ppm install Win32-Process-Info.ppd


If all else fails:

Get the Info.pm file and the Info folder from your kit by whatever means
you can, and drop them in /site/lib/Win32/Process (or wherever ...).


COPYRIGHT NOTICE
--------- ------

Copyright 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 by E. I. DuPont de Nemours and
Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

Changes since 1.006 copyright 2007 by Thomas R. Wyant, III. All rights
reserved.

This module is free software; you can use it, redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.