Question

I have a very simple interface which needs to communicate between processes. It’s currently implemented in a very simple manner (all single proc):

bool GetFoo(struct Foo *outFoo);
bool GetBar(struct Bar *getBar);

Such as:

Foo foo;
if (!GetFoo(&foo))
{
    ReportError();
}

GetFoo fills out the “Foo” data structure with pure data (that is, no pointers – it’s purely blitable data).

I need to convert this in-process function call to be between two processes on the same machine (in this case it’s always the same machine). Is there a commonly followed idiom for cross-process calls in C++ on Windows? Is there some kind of intra-process communication supported by Windows? Should I be using shared memory instead?

One note: I don’t want to take a dependency on anything other than the Windows APIs if at all possible.

Answer 1

You have many choices, but in my personal experience the most popular/easy to use ones are: sockets & pipes.

See here for all IPC options available for Windows.